Detection, Classification, and Estimation of Fault Location on an Overhead Transmission Line Using S-transform and Neural Network

This article demonstrates a technique for diagnosis of fault type and faulty phase on overhead transmission lines. A method for computation of fault location is also incorporated in this work. The proposed method is based on the multi-resolution S-transform, which is used for generating complex S-matrices of the current signals measured at the sending and receiving ends of the line. The peak magnitude of the absolute value of every S-matrix is noted. The phase angle corresponding to every peak component is obtained from the argument of the relevant S-matrix. These features are used as input vectors of a probabilistic neural network for fault detection and classification. Detection of faulty phase(s) is followed by estimation of fault location. The voltage signal of the affected phase is processed to generate the S-matrix. The frequency components of the S-matrices for different fault locations are used as input vectors for training a back-propagation neural network. The results are obtained with satisfactory accuracy and speed. All the simulations have been done in MATLAB (The MathWorks, Natick, Massachusetts, USA) environment for different values of fault locations, fault resistances, and fault inception angles. The effect of noise on both the current and voltage signals has been investigated.