Spread Spectrum Time-domain Reflectometry for Detecting and Locating Capacitive Impedances.

This paper describes new algorithms for spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR) for detecting and locating faults in photovoltaic (PV) panels. Specifically, we present a new method for identifying the impedance of multiple loads (such as PV panels) on a single transmission line. This method is based on adapting a well-known algorithm, known as orthogonal matching pursuit, to match simulated waveforms with multiple reflections in an SSTDR waveform. We demonstrate that our method successfully extracts waveform data from the SSTDR experiments and correctly estimates load impedances corresponding to reflections in this waveform data. We experimentally demonstrate that our method correctly estimates the capacitance values of various capacitive loads on a transmission line with an error as low as4%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]