Detection and Estimation of a Faults on Coaxial Cable with TFDR Algorithm

In this paper, a new high resolution reflectometry scheme, time-frequency domain reflectometry (TFDR), is proposed to detect and locate fault in wiring. Traditional reflectometry methods have been achieved in either the time domain or frequency domain only. However, time-frequency domain reflectometry utilizes time and frequency information of a transient signal to detect and locate the fault. The time-frequency domain reflectometry approach described in this paper is characterized by time-frequency reference signal design and post-processing of the reference and reflected signals to detect and locate the fault. Design of the reference signal in time-frequency domain reflectometry is based on the determination of the frequency bandwidth of the physical properties of cable under test. The detection and estimation of the fault on the time-frequency domain reflectometry relies on the time-frequency domain reflectometry is compared with commercial time domain reflectomtery (TDR) instrument. In these experiments provided in this paper, TFDR locates the fault with smaller error than TDR. Knowledge of time and frequency localized information for the reference and reflected signal gained via time-frequency analysis, allows one to detect the fault and estimate the location accurately.