Cable-Partial-Discharge Recognition Based on a Data-Driven Approach with Optical-Fiber Vibration-Monitoring Signals

The effective pattern recognition of cable partial discharges (PDs) enables prompt corresponding measures to ensure cable safety. Traditional PD monitoring methods have limitations in online monitoring and accurate positioning, and the feature extraction of the monitored electrical signals requires significant prior knowledge. Therefore, this paper reports the performance of the distributed optical-fiber vibration-sensing monitoring of PDs on a cable with different insulation defects, and proposes a data-driven recognition approach based on the monitoring signals. The time series of the backscattered Rayleigh light intensity (BRLI) changes at the PD position were collected as the sample data. The coefficients of the time series’ autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models were extracted as features. Next, a classification model trained by the random forest (RF) algorithm was established. After the model’s validation with the experimental data and a comparative analysis with previously published methods, the PD recognition model was simply optimized based on the RF principle. The results showed that the proposed method achieved a high recognition accuracy, of about 98%, indicating that the data-driven approach—combining the ARMA model and the RF—is effective for cable-PD pattern recognition in distributed optical-fiber vibration-sensing systems.