Abstract

Background: The large-scale aging of cross-linked polyethylene (XPLE) leads to an increase in the frequency of power cable accidents, which poses a threat to the safe operation of the power grid.

Objective: Traditional time-frequency domain reflectometry (TFDR) techniques for fault localization in power cables are susceptible to cross-terms interference, which makes it impossible to accurately locate defects. To overcome the limitation, this paper has proposed a novel cable fault localization method based on S-transform.

Method: The method employs S-transform to perform time-frequency analysis on the collected signals of TFDR, mapping the time-domain signals into time-frequency domain signals. Then, cross-correlation of the time-frequency domain signals is estimated, allowing for accurate positioning of cable defects.

Results: The results of the field experiments conducted on a 10 kV cross-linked polyethylene cable with artificially introduced defects have demonstrated that the proposed method could effectively locate the cable defects with small absolute error.

Conclusion: Compared to existing TFDR methods, the proposed method has been found to be free from interference of cross-terms, resulting in higher reliability and smaller blind spots for detecting cable defects.

Keywords: Defect Localization, Power Cable, Time-Frequency Domain Reflectometry, S-transform, cross-correlation