Embedded OMTDR Sensor for Small Soft Fault Location on Aging Aircraft Wiring Systems

Conference of 30th Eurosensors Conference, Eurosensors 2016 ; Conference Date: 4 September 2016 Through 7 September 2016; Conference Code:125797; International audience; Based on OMTDR technology, the first embedded Smart Connector (SmartCo) which could locate very small soft defects resulting from partial degradation of cables is introduced in this paper. To do so, the SmartCo injects the generated OMTDR signal at an extremity of the cable and then listens to the echoes created at each discontinuity of the cable characteristic impedance. Since soft defects result in faint reflected energy, they are hard to distinguish from the noise. Hence, the SmartCo uses an innovative approach based on advanced post-processing methods data fusion to eliminate false alarms and to determine the small soft fault position.