Detection and location of intermittent faults by monitoring carrier signal channel behavior of electrical interconnection system

Abstract

Intermittent faults in electrical interconnect system are short duration transients which would be completely missed by traditional monitoring and protection schemes but are the incipient events of a precursor of permanent faults to come. Due to random and non-reproducible nature, the intermittent faults are the most frustrating, elusive, and expensive faults to detect and locate in wiring systems. The novel approach of the author injects a modulated signal or carrier at one location of electrical wire system and diagnoses the health status of the wire by measuring the error rate of the carrier signal at another location of the system. This paper describes the carrier signal technology and its methods devised for detection and location of faults. The paper also reports the functionally tests of the proto board system of the proposed methods. The results demonstrate remarkable consistency in the error rates with staged fault conditions and clear discriminatory capability of locating faulted segment. Monitoring of the disruption of carrier signal over electrical wire between a transmitter and a receiver provides the most effective tool for continuously watching the wire system for detecting and locating the random, unpredictable intermittent faults, the harbingers of disastrous electrical failure.