Application of Time Difference of Arrival Methods in the Localization of Partial Discharge Sources Detected Using Bio-Inspired UHF Sensors

This paper discusses the application of the first peak and cumulative energy methods to calculate the time difference of arrival (TDOA) of UHF signalsemitted by a partial discharge source in order to locate it. We used a 200 x 200 x 97 cm3 dimensional arrangement composed of four UHF printed monopole antennas, which was bio-inspired by the Jatropha mollissima (Pohl) Baill leaf. In addition, an oil cell composed of a pair of immersed flat- tip electrodes was used as a source of partial discharge (PD). The oil cell was positioned at four different coordinates in order to determine the efficiency of source localization based on the signals detected by the antennas and the applied methods. Finally, we evaluated the effects of the addition of noise filtering techniques and the sampling error of the measuring instrument on the localization results. Both TDOA extraction methods converged to satisfactory location results considering the dimensional arrangement evaluated, resulting in absolute errors of 7.20 cm up to 9.00 cm and 5.40 cm up to 10.96 cm, regarding the real PD position, for the cumulative energy and first peak methods, respectively.