Analysis of Spread Spectrum Time Domain Reflectometry for Wire Fault Location.pdfVIP

IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 5, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2005 1469 Analysis of Spread Spectrum Time Domain Reflectometry for Wire Fault Location Paul Smith, Member, IEEE, Cynthia Furse, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jacob Gunther, Member, IEEE Abstract— Spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR) often cannot be replicated or located. During the few millisec- and sequence time domain reflectometry have been demonstrated onds it is active, the intermittent fault is a significant impedance to be effective technologies for locating intermittent faults on air- mismatch that can be detected, rather than the tiny mismatch craft wires carrying typical signals in flight. This paper examines the parameters that control the accuracy, latency, and signal to observed when it is inactive. A wire testing method that could noise ratio for these methods. Both test methods are shown to be test the wires continually, including while the plane is in flight effective for wires carrying ACpower signals, and SSTDR is shown would, therefore, have a tremendous advantage over conven- to be particularly effective at testing wires carrying digital sig- tional static test methods. nals such as Mil-Std 1553 data. Results are demonstrated for both Another important reason to test wires that are live and in controlled and uncontrolled impedance cables. The low test signal levels and high noise immunity of these test methods make them flight is to enable arc fault circuit breaker technology [5] that is well suited to test for intermittent wiring failures such as open cir- being developed to reduce the danger of fire due to intermittent