2011 Cross Strait Quad-Regional Radio Science and Wireless Technology Conference

Research of Infrared Thermal On-line Detection Technology of Zero Resistance Insulator

Jiazheng Lu, Chun Zhao, Zhenglong Jiang
Power Transmission and Distribution Equipment Anti-icing & Reducing-disaster Technology Laboratory Hunan Electric Power Corporation Research Institute Changsha, China zhaochunmail@tom.com

Shilei Guan, Yanping Qian, Defen Xia

College of Electrical and Information Engineering Hunan University Changsha, China

Abstract-The zero resistance insulator greatly threats the safe

and steady operation of the power system. A new method of detecting the zero resistance insulator on-line based on the infra red thermal image is presented. The recognition algorithm for zero resistance insulator with image processing is designed. The soft thresholding de-noising method is designed and Bayesian estimation is applied in the de-noising of infrared thermal images. The improved bi-threshold OTSU segmenting method is applied to wipe out the disturbed objects and keep only the plate area of insulators. Two-factor analysis of variance is used to assess the features of the infrared thermal images. Additional momentum and self-adaptive gradient descent algorithm are applied to improve back-propagation (BP) neural network in this research. Testing results show that these methods can achieve good effect.

With the development of the infrared diagnosis technology, this technology provides a support for the detection of the zero resistance insulator. This paper is devoted to study the infrared thermal on-line detection for zero resistance insulator with the image processing. II.
PRINCIPLE OF INFRARED THERMAL DETECTION

Keywords- infrared thermal image; zero resistance insulator; digital image processing; on-line detection

All objects which are not absolute zero will radiate electro magnetic waves with various wavelengths. The electro magnetic wave spectrum can be divided into many ranges of wavelength, shown in Fig. 1. These wave ranges are also called wave bands, differentiated by generation and detection methods of the radiation. The spectrum or the wavelength of the radiation is relevant to the property and the temperature of the object [6].

I.

INTRODUCTION

Ceramic insulators are widely used in the transmission lines of power system. If there is a zero resistance insulator (whose resistance is within the range of 0 5 Mil [1]) in an insulator string, a part of the insulation is shorted equivalently. Thus will decrease the effective creepage distance of the insulator string and increase the flashover probability of the insulator string. So, the existence of a zero resistance insulator in an insulator string is a great threat for the safe and steady operation of the power system.
-

10"",

Various methods are studied to detect the zero resistance insulator from the insulator string, such as measuring the voltage distribution, measuring the electric field strength, measuring the sonic or the supersonic, and observing the ultra violet images [2]-[5]. These methods have both advantages and disadvantages. Measuring the voltage distribution with a spark fork is obvious, but the working is very hard, low efficient, and not safe. Measuring the electric field strength with a special instrument is simple, but this method needs too many testing points. Measuring the sonic or the supersonic is simple, but it is easy to be influenced by the background noise and is difficult to distinguish the effective signal. Observing the ultraviolet images is obvious and good at predicting, but the instrument is very expensive and is more suitable for observing the partial discharge than detecting the zero resistance insulator.

Figure 1. Electromagnetic wave spectrum. 1: X-rays; 2: Ultraviolets; 3: Visible lights; 4: Infrared rays; 5: Microwaves; 6: Radio waves.

Objects with different temperatures radiate different infra red energy. The higher the temperature of an object is, i. e. the intenser the thermal motion of molecules or atoms is, the stronger the infrared radiation is. Human eyes can only see the radiation of a narrow wave band, which is called visible lights. For the radiation with the wavelength below O.4Jlm or above O.7Jlm, human eyes are incapable.

978-1-4244-9793-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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July 26-30, 2011

However, an infrared thennal camera can detect the infrared heat and transfer the heat to a thennal image and a temperature without contacts, further can display the image in a monitor and calculate the temperature. Current infrared thennal device works in the middle infrared region (within the wavelength range of 3 6 Jlm) or the far infrared region (within the wavelength range of 6 15 Jlffi). By detecting the infrared radiation of an object, a real-time image is generated in an infrared thennal camera, so as to provide a thennal image of the object. In other words, the invisible radiation image is transferred to a visible and clear image.

environment is the most relevant to the leakage current, the relative humidity of the environment is introduced to improve the detection accuracy.

Infrared thermal image

of insulator

Judgement

of the zero class

Target area

resistance insulator

Relative humidity, Pollution

The temperature distribution of a nonnal insulator string takes on a saddle shape, similar to the voltage distribution of it. If there is a zero resistance insulator in the insulator string, the reactance of the whole insulator string will decrease and the leakage current will increase. Thus the voltage distribution and the temperature distribution of the insulator string will change to some extent. Especially the heating of the zero resistance insulator will be weaker than the heating of other nonnal insulators, resulting that the temperature of the zero resistance insulator is lower than those of other insulators. Further, the thennal image of a zero resistance insulator will be darker (negative temperature rise) than those of the neighbouring nonnal insulators. The infrared thennal method to detect the zero resistance insulator is to compare the thennal images of neighbouring insulators. If the temperature distribution of an insulator string appears discontinuous and the thennal image of an insulator is darker than those of the neighbouring insulators, the darker one can be regarded as a zero resistance insulator. III.
ALGORITHM DESIGN OF INFRARED THERMAL DETECTION

Figure 2.

Recognition flowchart.

B.

Key Algorithms

De-noising algorithm o/ in/rared thermal image Infrared thennal images are usually with the characteristics of high noise and low contrast. So, de-noising and improving the image quality is the base of next processing. The soft thresholding de-noising method is designed in this research, and Bayesian estimation is applied in the de-noising of infrared thennal images. The soft thresholding function is adopted and the threshold is detennined in T

J)

(j2x IgN

(1)

where T is the threshold, (J is the standard variance of noise, N is the length of high frequency wavelet coefficient. The soft thresholding function compares the absolute value of the high frequency wavelet coefficient with the above threshold, with the equation as follows:

A. Rntire Recognition Method According to the characteristics of the infrared thennal image of zero resistance insulator, the on-line detection method of zero resistance insulator on the basis of infrared thennal image is presented. The thennal infonnation of every insulator in the infrared thennal image is mapped to a set of behavioral features. The feature of relative temperature distribution is extracted by some image processing methods such as self adaptive de-noising, segmenting, refming, and extracting insulator plate. While comparing the feature of zero resistance insulator with the feature of nonnal insulator, the zero resistance insulator can be recognized by judging the threshold with systematic analysis and artificial neural network. The recognition method is shown in Fig. 2. The entire recognition flowchart includes three parts: image pre processing, feature extracting, and zero resistance recognizing. The image pre-processing is to segment the insulator plate from the thennal image background, including the steps of image filtering, image segmenting, and plate extracting. The feature extracting is to extract the features that can reflect the zero resistance classification infonnation of the insulator from the target area. The zero resistance recognizing is to judge a zero resistance insulator according to the features extracted from the infrared thennal image. As the humidity of the

=
T

{I

W I -T,

I w l >T

0,

I W I T

(2)

where W is the high frequency wavelet coefficient, T is the threshold of wavelet coefficient, W T is the wavelet coefficient after processing. Supposing the infrared thennal image model of zero resistance insulator with noise is g=/+n where g
E RN x M

(3)

is the image with noise, / E RNxM is the

X

original image, n is the noise component, N dimension of image. After the wavelet transfonnation, we can get W=X+N

M is the

(4)

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where W is the wavelet coefficient with noise, X is the wavelet coefficient without noise, N is the noise component with the same distribution as n . For the infrared thermal image o f zero resistance insulator with noise, we can get the high frequency component and the low frequency component after the wavelet transformation in three directions (horizontal, vertical, and diagonal). As the noise focuses on the high frequency component and the useful image information focuses on the low frequency component, we don't deal with the low frequency component, but apply Bayesian estimation to the high frequency component as follows:

transformation on the plate area of insulators. The logarithm transformation is usually used to improve the low gray scale and suppress the high gray scale, so as to make the image detail of the low gray scale more clear and to achieve the image enhancement.

Wi (d) (i,j)

(1";1 (d) Wi 2 (1" (d) + (1"2 (d) (i,J) (d)

s.l n.l
.

b) Bi-threshold OTSU segmentation This is to segment the images with bi-threshold, based on the application of OTUS in segmenting complicated image [7]. Considering the normal insulator as object 01 and considering the zero resistance insulator as object 02, the infrared thermal image including the zero resistance insulator can be segmented into three areas with bi-threshold tl and t2. Three areas are background B, object 01, and object 02.
The gray scale histogram of the input image can be calculated as follows:

(5)

where d is equal to 1, 2, and 3, representing the horizontal direction, the vertical direction, and the diagonal direction respectively, I is the decomposition level, (iJ) is the number of wavelet coefficient, (1";/(d) and (1";, (d) respectively represent the wavelet coefficient variance of the signal and the noise in level I and direction d, :,j)(d) and ri(:,j)(d) respectively represent the wavelet coefficient with noise and the estimated value of wavelet coefficient in level I and direction d. With the estimated value of wavelet coefficient calculated in (5), the de-noised image can be acquired after the inverse wavelet transformation. Fig. 3 shows a de-noising instance. As can be seen, this method can retain the detailed information of the image and achieve good de-noising effect. Segmenting algorithm of infrared thermal image Many disturbed objects are inevitably taken in an image, such as conductors, supports, and even the background. But the interested object is only the plate area of insulators. So, segmenting must be performed to wipe out the disturbed objects and to keep only the plate area of insulators. Although the heating of a zero resistance insulator is apparently less than the heating of a normal insulator, its temperature rise relative to the background is not high yet. So ordinary algorithms are difficult to segment the thermal image of zero resistance insulator effectively. To solve this problem, the improved bi-threshold OTSU segmenting method is applied in this research. a) Logarithm transformation This is to enhance the images by performing the logarithm

(6)

where nj is the pixel number of gray scale, L is total number of gray scale, N is the total pixel number of the image, P(i) is the probability of the pixel number of gray scale i over the total pixel number. The probability and the gray scale average of every area can be calculated as follows:
II II

OJo

LP(i),
i=O 12 i=tl+l
L-I

f.10 =

LiP(i)/
i=O 12 i=tl+l
L-I

OJo

2)

OJI

LP(i), LP(i),

f.11 =

LiP(i)/
;=12+1

(7)
OJI

OJ2

;=/2+1

f.12 =

LiP(i)/ OJ2

where Wo and f.1o are the probability and the gray scale average of every area of background B, w, and f.1, are the probability and the gray scale average of every area of object 01, W2 and f.12 are the probability and the gray scale average of every area of object 02. The variance between classes can be calculated as follows:

where

2 0',

is the variance between classes.

2

The variance between classes 0', is correspondent to the bi 2 threshold of tl and t2. When the variance between classes 0', reaches the biggest value, corresponding gray scale values are the segmenting thresholds. So, tl and t2 should be determined 2 according to the biggest 0', .
In order to segment the zero resistance insulator and the normal insulator totally, tl is used in segmenting the image. Defming the gray scale of the point (the insulator) whose pixel number is greater than or equal to tl as 1 and the gray scale of (a) Figure 3. (b)

A de-noising instance. (a) Image with noise; (b)Image after de-noising.

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the point (the background) whose pixel number is less than tl as 0, a binary image can be acquired. c) Morphologic operation This is to perfect the binary image. As there are noise holes in the insulator area and noise blocks in the background, operations in the morphology are introduced to solve the problem. The open operation can remove the noise blocks in the background, and the close operation can fill up the noise holes in the insulator. A segmenting instance is shown in Fig. 4. As can be seen, the background is clean and the profile is clear with all details remained. Extracting features of infrared thermal image Extracting features is to transform the original data and acquire the most essential features. The determination of proper features is the key of successful pattern recognition classifier design. From the above analysis in II, we know that the important referenced data to judge the zero resistance insulator are the temperature distribution features of insulators in the working environment. So, seven parameters are extracted as the gray scale features of the infrared thermal images of insulators at first. The seven parameters are: the maximum Pmax and the minimum Pmin of the gray scale in the insulator string area, the maximum Pamax and the minimum Pamin of the average gray scale in the insulator plate area, the maximum Bmax, the minimum Bmin and the average Baver of the gray scale in the background. Owing to the influences of the intensity of light, the environment temperature, and the wind speed during the course of taking images, the measured temperatures by an infrared thermal camera sometimes cannot reflect the temperature distribution features accurately. In order to diminish such bad influences, three other parameters are added as the gray scale features of the infrared thermal images of insulators. The three parameters are: the variance of gray scale distribution in the insulator area Pvari, the maximal difference of gray scale in the insulator area T" and the maximal difference of gray scale between the plate and the background T2 Two-factor analysis of variance is performed to assess the above ten parameters. Recognition model design of zero resistance insulator Artificial neural network can simulate the parallel information processing mode of human brains and are widely

used in the fields of pattern recognition, fault diagnosis, and optimal calculation. The back-propagation (BP) neural net work is often used in recognition model design. BP neural net work is simple, fault tolerant, and robust. But it also have some shortages such as the low convergence rate, not guaranteeing the smallest convergence value, high redundancy. Additional momentum and self-adaptive gradient descent algorithm are applied to improve BP neural network in this research. A three layer BP neural network model is established to recognize the zero resistance insulator. The tested data show that this method can achieve the accuracy of 94.13% under the experimental conditions. IV.
CONCLUSION

3)

1) A new method of detecting the zero resistance insulator on the basis of infrared thermal image is presented. The relevance between the information of zero resistance insulator and its infrared thermal image is established. 2) The recognition algorithm for zero resistance insulator with image processing is designed. The soft thresholding de noising method and Bayesian estimation are applied in the de noising of infrared thermal images. The improved bi-threshold OTSU segmenting method is applied. Two-factor analysis of variance is performed to assess the features. Additional momentum and self-adaptive gradient descent algorithm are applied to improve BP neural network. Testing results show the good effect of these methods. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This project is supported by Hunan Electric Power Corporation.
REFERENCES [I] G. H. Vaillancourt, 1. P. Bellerive, M. St-Jean, et ai, "New live line tester for porcelain suspension insulators on high-voltage power line," IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, vol. 9, pp. 208-219, January, 1994. Z. X. Liu, C. X. Huang, "Study on the voltage distribution of insulator strings and the discrimination method of low and zero resistance insulators for 500kV transmission line," High Voltage Engineering, pp. 24-27, June, 1992. Y. C. Cheng, C. R. Li, X. H. Ma, "Study on online detection of faulty composite insulators by electric field method," High Voltage Engineering, vol. 28, pp. 8-9, December, 2002. M. G. Liu, T. Yu, "Research on sonic pulse zero value iusulator live line detector," North China Electric Power, pp. 25-28, December, 2000. C. W. Yuan, W. He, T. Chen, "The experiment study of the faulty insulator on-line monitoring based on non-touching UV pulse method," Journal of Chongqing University of Science and Technology (Natural Sciences Edition), vol. 10, pp. 78-81, January, 2008. Operational manual of ThermaCAMP30, FLIR systems, 2005 L. Wang, H. C. Duan, "Application of Otsu' method in multi-threshold image segmentation," Computer Engineering and Design, vol. 29, pp. 2844-2845, June, 2008.

[ 2]

[3]

4)

[4] [5]

[6] [7]

(a) Figure 4.

(b)

A segmenting instance. (a) Insulator image; (b)Binary image.

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