IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO.
11, NOVEMBER 2014 2651
Fault Detection and Classification in Medium
Voltage DC Shipboard Power Systems With
Wavelets and Artificial Neural Networks
Weilin Li, Member, IEEE, Antonello Monti, Senior Member, IEEE,
and Ferdinanda Ponci, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract— This paper proposes a fault detection and clas-
sification method for medium voltage DC (MVDC) shipboard
power systems (SPSs) by integrating wavelet transform (WT)
multiresolution analysis (MRA) technique with artificial neural
networks (ANNs). The MVDC system under consideration for
future all-electric ships presents a range of new challenges, in
particular the fault detection and classification issues addressed in
this paper. The WT-MRA and Parseval’s theorem are employed
in this paper to extract the features of different faults. The
energy variation of the fault signals at different resolution levels
are chosen as the feature vectors. As a result of analysis and
comparisons, the Daubechies 10 (db10) wavelet and scale 9 are
the chosen wavelet function and decomposition level. Then, ANN
is adopted to automatically classify the fault types according
to the extracted features. Different fault types, such as short
circuit faults on both dc bus and ac side, as well as ground
fault, are analyzed and tested to verify the effectiveness of the
proposed method. These faults are simulated in real time with
a digital simulator and the data are then initially analyzed with
MATLAB. The case study is a notional MVDC SPS model, and
promising classification accuracy can be obtained according to
simulation results. Finally, the proposed fault detection algorithm
is implemented and tested on a real-time platform, which enables
it for future practical use.
Index Terms— Artificial neural networks (ANNs), fault
detection and classification, medium voltage dc (MVDC) system,
wavelet transform (WT)-based multiresolution analysis (MRA).
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE development of integrated electrical propulsion, the
increase in high energy electrical loads and the wide-
spread use of power electronics are placing a heavy demand
on the quality and survivability of shipboard power distribution
systems [1]–[3]. Medium voltage dc (MVDC) zonal distribu-
tion architecture is proposed as a new distribution system for
the all-electric ships (AES) in which the presence of power
Manuscript received November 6, 2013; revised February 4, 2014; accepted
February 5, 2014. Date of publication April 9, 2014; date of current version
October 7, 2014. This work was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval
Research under Grant N0014-08-1-0080. The Associate Editor coordinating
the review process was Dr. Kurt Barbe.
W. Li is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Northwestern
Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China, and also with the E.ON
Energy Research Centre, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen 52074, Germany
(e-mail: li.weilin@hotmail.com).
A. Monti and F. Ponci are with the E.ON Energy Research Centre, RWTH
Aachen University, Aachen 52074, Germany (e-mail: amonti@eonerc.rwth-
aachen.de; fponci@eonerc.rwth-aachen.de).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2014.2313035
0018-9456 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
converters is pervasive [1]. These power electronic devices can
greatly simplify the system by providing more available space,
possible cost reduction, higher efficiency, higher safety, and
variable control to achieve self-healing and survivability [3].
However, the detection, location, identification and isolation
of various faults within the zonal distribution system remain
a challenge.
There are already some established fault detection methods
for a high voltage DC (HVDC) power system [4]. However,
the fault detection schemes for a MVDC system of naval ship-
board power system (SPS) are still in the developmental stages
because of the smaller scale and higher safety requirement.
Most of all, while HVDC has been so far used in point to
point application, the SPS is by nature a more challenging
multiterminal dc network.
Some fault detection and classification issues in MVDC
power systems have been addressed in [5]–[17]. In particular,
a fault location technique based on active impedance esti-
mation (AIE) was proposed in [6]–[8], which used a power
converter connected to the bus to evaluate the bus impedance
by injecting a very short current spike and analyzing the
associated current and voltage transient responses. However,
obtaining the accurate system impedance in a short time during
the system operation is a challenge. Aurangzeb et al. [9]
proposed an overcurrent protection method for detecting and
locating the disturbances that may occur on voltage source
converter (VSC)-based multiterminal dc distribution systems.
Hard thresholds were adopted to detect the faults: a fault is
assumed to have occurred if the monitored signal exceeds a
given threshold for a given duration of time. However, the
accuracy of this method turns out to be easily affected by
disturbances or noise. A more detailed review of the related
work in the field of fault detection and classification in MVDC
power systems will be given in Section II.
Recently, the use of high frequency components of the fault
generated transient signals was studied for fault protection and
some useful solutions were obtained [18], [19]. This method
enables accurate fault detection unaffected by power swings.
However, it is only adopted for transmission line protection in
traditional ac power systems. Thus, it will be of great value to
develop a signal pattern analysis-based method for detection
and classification of the faults in MVDC SPSs according to
fault generated transient signals. Based on the advanced signal
processing and artificial intelligence techniques, the obtained
2652 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
new method can avoid the problems present in traditional
schemes, and has a strong capability of generalization to
different kinds of faults.
Fast Fourier transform (FFT) method, short time Fourier
transform (STFT) method, and wavelet transform (WT) are
among the signal processing methods for frequency and time-
frequency analysis used in power systems. The intrinsic draw-
back of the traditional methods, such as FFT, is the lack
of information in the time domain [20], thus they are unfit
for detecting transients or short spikes in the signal. STFT
method is also limited due to the constraint on the window’s
size: using a wide window results in good frequency but poor
time resolution, while using a narrow window results in poor
frequency but good time resolution. The WT has the ability to
decompose wideband and nonstationary signals into specific
time-frequency resolutions. In particular, WT can be used to
extract the abrupt-changing features of signals (such as the
sharp increase of current during short circuit fault), which is
the representation of the signal dynamics [21]. Comparative
studies of the aforementioned signal processing techniques
for feature extraction of different power quality events are
given in [22]. Wavelet analysis techniques have been proposed
extensively for fault detection, localization, and classification
of different territorial power system transients [23]. Few papers
already investigated the possibility to apply WT-based method
for fault location and classification in dc power systems
[13], [14]. However, two practical problems must be overcome
in the implementation of wavelets for fault detection in MVDC
power systems.
1) Adopting directly the WT coefficients for fault detection
requires large memory space and computing time. Thus,
a feature vector with reduced quantities and without
losing the property of the original signal needs to be
chosen.
2) The wavelet function, as well as the decomposition level
must be properly chosen to meet the tradeoff between the
accuracy of detecting the fault type and the computing
efficiency.
Regarding the selection of the pattern recognition method to
automatically and accurately identify the fault types based on
the feature vectors, the methods of interest include artificial
intelligence and expert systems. However, expert systems
are expensive in their development and time consuming in
their execution, hence not suited for real-time (RT) appli-
cations [24]. Artificial neural network (ANN) methodologies
appear to be well suit for these applications [25]. They are
fit for RT use due to their relatively fast calculation time.
ANNs are capable of finding complex and hidden relationships
among the presented data [26].
Li et al. [27] investigated the use of WT MRA technique
to extract the features of different fault signals in MVDC
SPSs. This paper is extended here by integrating WT-based
MRA technique with ANN to construct a classifier for auto-
matic recognition of the fault types in future AES. First, the
WT-based MRA technique and the Parseval’s theorem are
employed to extract the feature vectors of different types of
fault. The db10 wavelet and scale 9 are chosen as appropri-
ate wavelet function and decomposition level, respectively,
through detailed analysis and comparison, as presented in
Section IV. In this paper, the energy variations of the fault
signal at different resolution levels are adopted as feature
vectors. By employing the Parseval’s theorem, the information
is condensed, thus reducing the data size and yielding a
manageable feature vector. Then, an ANN is adopted to
automatically classify the fault types according to the extracted
features, which is suitable for RT operation of fault type
classification problems. Numerical simulation has been used to
verify the capability of the proposed fault detection algorithm
on a notional MVDC SPS. In order to verify the effectiveness
of the proposed approach, the SPS is first simulated in RT,
and results are then postprocessed with MATLAB. Simulation
results show that good classification accuracy can be obtained
with the proposed method. Then, the proposed algorithm is
implemented and tested on a full RT simulation platform. The
proposed classifier can be used as a postfault diagnosis method
to recognize, and identify the sources and causes of faults thus
supporting the decision on mitigating actions.
Compared with the previous literature, the innovative
contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows.
1) This paper first applies WT-based MRA technique and
ANN-based algorithm for fault detection and classifi-
cation in MVDC SPSs, using the energy variation as
feature vectors. The proposed algorithm has been tested
for short circuit faults and for ground faults. Compared
with the other methods, this method does not require
interzone communication and external signal injection.
Moreover, its performance is not influenced by variation
of electrical parameters.
2) The process of selection of the suitable wavelet function
and of the optimal decomposition level is detailed, to
achieve a tradeoff between the accuracy and computing
efficiency.
3) The simulation results of the extracted features are based
on the analysis of RT simulated data obtained from real-
time digital simulator (RTDS) [28], [29], which sets the
conditions for a more realistic scenario and for easy
further transition, e.g., to hardware-in-the-loop (HiL)
testing and communication assessment.
4) The proposed algorithm has been implemented and
tested in RT on a LabVIEW RT target [30] interfaced
with the RTDS, thus the obtained classifier has online
applicability for the purpose of practical use.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II gives
a brief review and comparison of related work in MVDC
system fault detection and classification. The notional diagram
of the MVDC SPS and the general structure of the proposed
algorithm are provided in Section III. Section IV introduces
the WT theory and the MRA technique in brief, as well as
the procedures to select the optimal wavelet function and
decomposition level. Section V presents the Parseval’s theorem
and how it is used to extract the feature vectors of the fault
signal. Section VI introduces the structure and principles of the
adopted ANNs, together with the classification results. The RT
implementation and test of the proposed algorithm are given
in Section VII. The conclusion is presented in Section VIII.
LI et al.: FAULT DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION IN MVDC SPSs 2653

II. R ELATED W ORK

As indicated previously, the fault detection schemes in
MVDC SPSs are still in the early developmental stage, due
to its smaller scale compared with territorial power systems,
higher safety requirement, and the more complex multitermi-
nal distribution network. This section will give a more detailed
review of the state of the art methods that have been applied
for fault detection and classification in MVDC power systems.
Table IV summarizes the related work in this research field
(Appendix).
Among the solutions proposed in literature, the current
differential protection (CDP) scheme may be the simplest [5].
The principle of CDP scheme is based on Kirchhoff’s current
law that states that the sum of the currents entering a node
must be zero. In the current differential scheme, all the currents
entering a piece of equipment are monitored and if their sum is Fig. 1. MVDC SPS notional scheme.
nonzero it is assumed there is an internal fault. This protection
scheme is very precise and fast, with a high sensitivity. The
structure of ANN is very complex and does not support on-line
main drawbacks are: a pilot wire or communication link
implementation.
between all the device terminals is needed; only the zone
The discrete WT (DWT) has been applied to detect any
between the current transformers is protected, it does not
surges in dc third rail current waveform of dc transit systems
provide backup protection to other parts of the system, and
in [13] and [14]. In the event of a surge, the WT extracts
it is susceptible to current transformer errors and pilot wire
a feature vector from the current waveform and feeds it to
asymmetries.
a self-organizing neural network. The neural network then
AIE fault location technique uses a power converter con-
determines whether the feature vector belongs to a fault current
nected to the bus to estimate the impedance of the bus to
surge due to short circuit or to a normal surge due to the
source [6]–[8]. To do this, it injects a very short current spike
starting of the chopper train. The only disadvantage of this
onto the system (via a coupling inductance) at the point of
method is that, all the coefficients at certain decomposition
measurement (POM). The injected current, and the resultant
level are selected as a feature vector, which leads to very slow
bus voltage transient are recorded and used to calculate the
training process.
system impedance. The system impedance measured at POM
Reference [15] investigates the main challenges of detecting
is expected to contain the information on both the fault
and localizing a fault, and interrupting it as quickly as pos-
location and the fault severity. However, challenges still lie in
sible in a VSC-based multiterminal dc system. It illustrates
the appropriate choice of frequency under which the measured
that protection can be simplified using the power-electronic
impedance can provide a sufficiently high resolution.
converters’ ability to act as fault current-limiting circuit
Traveling wave fault location is a well known and estab-
breakers (CBs). It is shown that by associating relays with
lished technique for accurately locating faults in transmission
the converters and by adopting overcurrent-based protection
lines and to a more limited extent in distribution lines [9]–[11].
schemes for these relays, the faults on the system can be
When a fault occurs in a transmission line there is a sudden
detected and localized very fast. Hard thresholds were adopted
drop in voltage at the fault location. This abrupt change in
to detect the faults: a fault is assumed to have occurred if
operating conditions causes high frequency travelling waves
the monitored signal exceeds a given threshold for a given
to propagate in both directions away from the fault location.
duration of time. Thus, the accuracy of this method turns out
Traveling wave fault location can be performed by making
to be easily affected by disturbances or noise. Moreover, due
time synchronized measurements at both ends of the trans-
to the small line inductance and resistance of the compact
mission line (double-ended) and time-tagging the arrival of
power network, and the variation of fault resistance, similar
the initial travelling waves usually using a Global Positioning
response may present for different fault locations, leading to
System timing signal. However, the MVDC power system is
selectivity issues.
of small scale, making it difficult to measure with enough
accuracy the time difference. Also, real effect, such as cable
III. MVDC SPS S AND THE G ENERAL S TRUCTURE
terminations, junctions, and terminal connections may impact
OF THE P ROPOSED A LGORITHM
the performance of this method.
Chanda and Fu [12] propose an ANN-based method for A. MVDC SPSs
the fault classification and location in the MVDC SPSs using The notional diagram of the MVDC SPS considered here
the transient information in the fault voltage and current is shown in Fig. 1. The system is organized in five zones
waveforms. It is found to be efficient in detecting the type (separated by dashed lines and numbered one to five in figure).
and location of the dc cable faults. However, they directly The prototype architecture considered here is a revised version
use the sampled data as the input of ANN, which leads to a of the system considered by the U.S. Navy, and it represents a
very long training and calculation time. Moreover, the adopted generic multiterminal dc distribution system [31]. Zones 3–5
2654 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014

are connected to the primary dc buses (Starboard and Portside

bus) via power converters based on power electronic building
blocks [(PEBBs), labeled PEBB_zoneNR_NR]. The system
also has two ac sources (generators) in Zones 1 and 2 feeding
the primary dc buses through rectifying converters. Vital loads,
generic Load 2 in Zone 3 and induction motor drive in Zone 5,
can be supplied from either the Starboard bus or the Portside
bus but not by both buses at the same time. Auctioneering
diodes are adopted to realize this function. The secondary
dc buses at the same zone are kept at different voltages (800
and 750 V), so that if a contingency occurs on one bus
that causes the voltage to drop, then the auctioneering diodes
allows the load to be picked up by the other bus. During
normal operation, the primary dc buses kept at 5-kV dc, in
particular the positive pole has +2.5 kV and the negative
pole −2.5 kV. Each bus feeds two kinds of loads: vital loads Fig. 2. Simplified schematic of the notional MVDC SPS.
(100 kW) and nonvital loads (50 kW).
To verify the proposed fault detection approach in this paper,
a set of data obtained from RT simulation is analyzed. For
this purpose, the notional MVDC SPS model is implemented
in RTDS. In particular, the small time step model is built to
represent the circuit dynamics with time steps in the range
1–4 μs. It is to be noted that although the model can execute
at microseconds level, the controller may not be so fast
due to the fact that it needs time for calculation and the
limitation from the switching capability of the converters.
In this case, the controller is executed at milliseconds level.
The detailed description of the control methods applied to
PEBB-based converters in MVDC power systems can be found
in [32] and [33].

B. Short Circuit Fault

Physical system faults of SPSs can be categorized as
phase-to-ground fault (ground fault), and phase-to-phase (short
circuit fault).
The potential short circuit faults on board of a ship are
shown in Fig. 1, labeled as F1 on the portside bus, F2 on the
secondary bus in Zone 5, and F3 on the load side. In case of a
short circuit fault at location F3, the induction motor drive
(vital load) loses power. However, assuming the converter
modules (PEBB5_3) can operate in current limiting mode [32],
the current then decreases slightly to zero until the converters
are shut down. The fault will therefore not affect the remainder
of the system except for a drop in load. In the case of a short
circuit fault at location F2, the Portside converter module limits
the current and the Starboard converter takes over the power
supply to induction machine through the auctioneering diodes.
The auctioneering diodes ensure that the transfer of power
from main bus to alternate bus is seamless and without inter-
ruption. The system is thus designed to be robust with respect
to these faults. However, a short circuit fault at location F1, is
more detrimental to the whole power system than the previous
two kinds of fault. In this case, in fact, the entire Portside bus
is temporarily lost. Thus, the detection of this kind of fault
becomes the main focus in this case study. Although we only
focus on the most serious fault, the obtained fault detection
algorithm can also be applied to other fault types.
Fig. 3. Current waveforms of primary dc bus when short circuit faults occur.
The following cases are simulated in RTDS (as shown in
Fig. 2, which is a simplified schematic of the notional MVDC
SPS).
1) Short circuit fault on primary dc bus.
2) Short circuit fault on ac side (phase-to-phase fault), as
this kind of fault will also cause a dramatic change of
the voltage and current in primary dc bus, and should
be distinguished.
In actual MVDC power systems, the PEBB-based converters
and disconnectors will be used to interrupt the fault current
when short circuit fault occurs. However, in this paper, we did
not consider the protection action of the system after the fault
has been detected and classified due to the following reasons:
the fault can be detected before the protection actions will be
taken (for example, before the CBs are open); the duration of
the fault will not affect the performance of the fault detection
method due to the fact that high frequency components of
the fault generated transient signals was used.
The current of the primary dc bus (measurement point_SC
as shown in Fig. 2) is monitored for detection of short circuit
faults. The waveforms, when different short circuit faults
occur, are shown in Fig. 3 [27]. It is noticed that both short
circuit faults will lead to a significant increase in the dc bus
current.
LI et al.: FAULT DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION IN MVDC SPSs
Fig. 4. Noise signal of measurement point when negative line to ground
fault occurs in Zone 3 at 0.04 s.
C. Ground Fault
High-resistance grounding (or ungrounded) is implemented
in the MVDC SPSs to permit continuity of service during
a ground fault [35]. To prevent subsequent phase-to-ground
faults on another phase from causing a disruptive phase-to-
phase fault, it is essential that fault identification and location
methods are accurate and robust. However, locating ground
faults in an ungrounded shipboard power distribution system is
inherently difficult because it has to be done while the system
is still in operation (which is a salient feature of ungrounded
power system), and without interrupting the service to vital
loads. Furthermore, such faults do not provide considerable
fault current for tracing the fault location.
In this paper, the ground fault detection and identification
is based on the pattern analysis of inherent high frequency
background noise, which is introduced by repetitive switching
events of power electronic converters interacting with system
parasitic elements (such as cable insulation capacitance and
stray inductance) [35]. In particular, as shown in Fig. 2, the
midpoint voltage of the dc source capacitor (measurement
point_G as indicated) was measured to obtain the noise signal
since a significant change in it will not only indicate the
occurrence of a fault, but also directly identify general fault
types.
In this paper, the ground fault at Zone 3 has been used
as case study to validate the proposed algorithm. The signals
of the measurement point_G under both normal condition and
ground fault occurrence in Zone 3 are shown in Fig. 4. Bigger
oscillations are noticed when ground fault occurs.
D. General Structure of the Proposed Algorithm
The proposed fault diagnostic algorithm is based on the
signature analysis of the monitored signals, performed with
WT-based MRA techniques for feature extraction and ANN for
feature classification. The flowchart of the proposed algorithm
is shown in Fig. 5. At the data acquisition stage, the monitored
signal selected for fault diagnostic is sampled. Then, the
WT-based MRA technique is used for decomposing each
signal into low frequency approximation and high frequency
details. Parseval’s theory is applied to extract the feature
vectors of each sampled signal. The extracted feature vectors
are then used as the inputs of a three-layer feedforward neural
2655
Fig. 5. Flowchart of the proposed algorithm.
network for classification. The outputs of the neural networks
indicate the fault types (normal operation, dc bus short circuit
fault, disturbance caused by ac side short circuit fault, or
ground fault, those are the most likely faults that may occur
on board of a ship according to [9]).
This method reduces the quantities needed for training with
the use of feature vectors and supports RT online implementa-
tion. Moreover, the performance of this method is not affected
by variations in electrical parameters like fault resistance and
loads. The objective is to obtain a practical classifier that can
be used as a fault diagnosis method to recognize, and classify
the sources and causes of faults before appropriate mitigating
actions can be taken.
IV. WAVELET-BASED MRA
In the following sections, the WT theory, the multiresolution
analysis (MRA) technique, the selection of appropriate wavelet
function, and the calculation of optimal decomposition level
will be described in detail.
A. WT Theory
Based on the characteristics of the bandpass filters, the WT
has been proposed to investigate the transient phenomena of
power signals from different scales of the WT coefficients.
Particularly, the transient behaviors with high-frequency com-
ponents can be analyzed.
The definition of continuous WT (CWT) for a given signal
x(t) with respect to a mother wavelet ψ(t) is
 ∞  
1 t −b
CWT(a, b) = √ x(t)ψ dt (1)
a −∞ a
where a is the scale factor and b is the translation factor. For
CWT, t, a, and b are all continuous.
The application of WT in engineering areas usually requires
a DWT, which implies the discrete form of t, a, and b in (1).
The representation of DWT can be written as
 
1  k − nb0 a0m
DWT(m, n) =  m x(k)ψ (2)
a0 a0m
k
2656 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
Fig. 6. Decomposition of WT-based MRA.
where the original a and b parameters in (1) are changed to
be the functions of integers m, n, and k is an integer variable
and it refers to a sample number in an input signal.
B. Multiresolution Analysis
The MRA is a framework for hierarchical representation of
a signal at its different scales. The goal of WT-based MRA is
to develop representations of a signal f (t) in terms of both
the scaling and the wavelet functions, in the following terms
[36], [37]:
 
J 
f (t) = c J,k φ J,k (t) + d j,k ψ j,k (t)
k j =1 k

c J,k = f (t)φ̄ J,k (t)
k the order of the wavelet function. The problem of selecting

d j,k = f (t)ψ̄ j,k (t).
k
In (3), φ̄(t) and ψ̄(t) are conjugate of scaling function φ(t)
and wavelet function ψ(t), respectively.
The procedure of WT-based MRA is shown in Fig. 6 [38],
where x[n] is the sampled signal of f (t). MRA is performed
by passing the signal x[n] through a high-pass filter h[n]
and a low-pass filter g[n], and this is followed by a down
sampling by two to compute both the scaling coefficients
[(SCs), also called approximation] and wavelet coefficients
[(WCs), also called detail]. SCs represent the low frequency
components, while WCs represent the high frequency com-
ponents. Assuming the original sampling frequency is f s , the
frequency bands of different decomposition levels are shown
in Fig. 6. By transforming a signal, the features of the signal
can be extracted from SCs and WCs. In the case of disturbance
signals in power systems, WCs are more important because the
transient features of the signals are mostly represented by the
high-frequency components [38].
C. Selection of Mother Wavelet
Before WT-based MRA is applied for feature extraction, the
appropriate wavelet function and decomposition scales need
to be carefully selected considering that they will impact the
accuracy and processing time of the proposed fault detection
method. The criteria adopted in this paper for selecting the
mother wavelet are summarized here [40].
Fig. 7. Frequency response of the filters based on different wavelets.
1) The wavelet function should have enough number of
vanishing moments to represent the salient features of
the disturbances.
2) The wavelet should provide sharp cutoff frequencies to
reduce the amount of leakage energy to the adjacent
resolution levels.
3) The wavelet should obtain higher total wavelet energy
of the same feature of the same signal.
4) The wavelet basis should be orthonormal.
There are several orthogonal wavelet families, which are the
Daubechies family (dbN), Symlets family (symN), Coiflets
family (coifN), and Meyer family (meyr) [39], with N being
(3) an optimum wavelet function can be defined as selecting
orthonormal basis function. The minimum description length
(MDL) data criterion is applied in this case to select the
optimum wavelet function, which states that the best model
within the group of models has the shortest description of
data and model itself. The available orthogonal wavelets
are tested by the MDL data criterion to select an optimum
wavelet function in [38], and the evaluation results show that
the Daubechies wavelet functions have the smallest MDL
indices. Thus, only Daubechies wavelets are considered as
they enable fast computation speed and are therefore suit-
able for RT application [13]. In this paper, db2–db10 are
chosen as mother wavelet candidates because, according to
the literature, they show excellent performance in analyz-
ing dynamic signals with discontinuity and abrupt changes
[39], [41], and also higher order wavelets lead to longer
computation time.
Fig. 7 shows the frequency response of the filters based on
different mother wavelets: db2, db10. The frequency responses
of the low-pass filter (scaling function) are represented by
the dashed lines, and the high-pass filters (wavelet functions)
are represented by the solid lines. The frequency response
of db10 shows a dramatic reduction in the overlapping
region and sharper cutoff frequency, compared with that
using db2. Minimum leakage energy is thus expected during
the wavelet decomposition process with smaller overlapping
region between the two filters and more information will
be remained after decomposition for feature extraction and
LI et al.: FAULT DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION IN MVDC SPSs 2657

classification. Based on the above analysis, db10 wavelet is A. Parseval’s Theorem

chosen in this case. The comparison of these two wavelet If the selected scaling function and the wavelet function
functions in extracting the features are presented more in detail form an orthonormal basis, then Parseval’s theorem relates the
in Section V with simulation results. energy of the fault signal to the energy of the coefficients.
Hence, referring to the wavelet decomposition, this means
D. Selection of Decomposition Level that the energy (E Signal) of fault signal can be expressed
It is preferable to use a higher decomposition level in order mathematically in terms of the expansion coefficients [43],
not to miss the features. However, as the decomposition level [44] as
increases, the computational time becomes significantly larger.  ∞ 
 ∞
Therefore, it is crucial to select a suitable decomposition level E Signal = |c J (k)| + 2
|d j (k)|2 . (6)
that makes a good tradeoff between the number of candidate k=−∞ j =1 k=−∞
features and computing time. Equation (6) could also be written in the following form:
Once a mother wavelet is selected, the data-independent
selection (DIS) method is considered to determine the optimal 
J

levels of decomposition in this paper [42]. E Signal = E c J + Ed j (7)

The DIS approach is based on the following steps. j =1
1) The number of decomposition levels (n Ls ) to be adopted with
depends on the sampling frequency f s of the signal qj
being analyzed. It has to be chosen to allow the high- 
qJ 
Ec J = |c J i |2 , Ed j = |d j i |2 (8)
level signals (approximation and details) to cover all
i=1 i=1
the range of frequencies along which the sideband is
localized. The sideband components are known as the where subscript j stands for the scale, and the maximum
harmonic components that appear around (left and right) number of scale is J ; subscript i stands for the point in WCs;
the fundamental frequency components. and q j is the length of WCs at scale j .
2) The minimum number of decomposition levels that is This energy reflects the energy concentration at each scale.
necessary for obtaining an approximation signal so that The larger the wavelet energy, the more relevant the infor-
the upper limit of its associated frequency band is mation contained in the decomposition terms [38]. In this
under the fundamental frequency f is described by the paper, the difference of energy (E) contained in the WCs at
following condition [42]: each scale between faulted signal (E Fault ) and normal signal
(E Normal ) is adopted as the vector for feature extraction.
2−(n Ls +1) fs < f. (4) The proposed feature vector x can then be mathematically
From this condition, the decomposition level of the approx- represented as
imation signal is the integer n Ls , given by ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
x1 E Fault.d1 E Normal.d1 E d1
  ⎢ .. ⎥ ⎢ .. ⎥ ⎢ .. ⎥ ⎢ .. ⎥
log( fs / f ) ⎢. ⎥ ⎢. ⎥ ⎢. ⎥ ⎢. ⎥
n Ls = floor (5) ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
log(2) x =⎢ x ⎥ = ⎢ E ⎥ − ⎢ E
⎢ j ⎥ ⎢ Fault.d j ⎥ ⎢ Normal.d j ⎥ ⎢
⎥ = ⎢ E dj ⎥ ⎥
where floor() means to take the integral part of the calculation ⎢ .. ⎥ ⎢ . ⎥ ⎢. ⎥ ⎢. ⎥
⎣ . ⎦ ⎣ .. ⎦ ⎣ .. ⎦ ⎣ .. ⎦
result.
For our application, further decomposition of this signal has xJ E Fault.d J E Normal.d J E d J .
to be done so that the frequency band [0, f ] will be decom- (9)
posed into more bands. Usually, two additional decomposition
levels, (i.e., n Ls + 2) would be adequate for the analysis [42]. B. Feature Extraction Results
After calculation according to (5), scale 9 is selected as the
1) Features of Short Circuit Faults: By applying the
decomposition level in this paper. The frequency bands of
WT-based MRA method with db10, and the Parseval’s theory,
different decomposition levels for fault analysis are provided
the detailed energy distributions of the decomposition levels of
in the Appendix.
the dc bus current signals under different operating conditions
(normal and faults) are shown in Figs. 8–10, respectively.
V. F EATURE E XTRACTION The x-axis is the decomposition level and the y-axis is the
The detail coefficients and approximation coefficients energy. In this case, the sampling frequency is 5 kHz, and
obtained from wavelet MRA should not directly be used the frequency bands of the decomposition levels are provided
as the classifier inputs. To reduce the feature dimension, in the Appendix, in Table II. The results clearly show an
the feature extraction methods are generally implemented increased energy at the decomposition levels from 5 to 8 of the
to these coefficients at each decomposition level. Common fault signals, compared with the normal operating condition.
statistical approaches, such as mean, standard deviation, rms, This is because these four decomposition levels cover the
and Shannon-entropy, are not robust with noise [22]. Thus, frequency range from 9.265 to 156.25 Hz, which comprises
in this paper, we proposed to use energy-based technique for the fundamental frequencies (60 Hz, due to the presence of
feature extraction, which uses Parseval’s theorem. the fundamental frequency of the ac side of the MVDC power
2658 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
Fig. 8. Detailed energy distribution of each decomposition level of dc bus
current under normal operation condition.
Fig. 9. Detailed energy distribution of each decomposition level of dc bus
current under short circuit fault on dc bus.
Fig. 10. Detailed energy distribution of each decomposition level of dc bus
current under short circuit fault on ac side.
system), the second harmonic (120 Hz), as well as some low
frequency components.
Substituting the energies of each decomposition level
into (9), we can get the feature vectors for different short
circuit fault locations (as shown in Fig. 2), as shown in Fig. 11.
Fig. 11. Extracted feature vectors of short circuit fault with db10 wavelet.
Fig. 12. Extracted feature vectors short circuit fault with db2 wavelet.
The short circuit fault can be detected by comparing the vector
x 6 [ which equals to E d6 as given in (9)] with a properly
predefined threshold value: a fault is confirmed only if the
feature vector x 6 exceeds the threshold value. The capability
of the proposed method to distinguish the short circuit fault
on dc bus from short circuit fault on generator ac side could
also be realized by comparing the feature vector of the faulted
signal, the short circuit fault on primary dc bus will lead to
significantly higher values.
To show that the db10 wavelet performs better as expected,
the feature vectors extracted via db2 wavelet is shown in
Fig. 12. Comparing the results in Figs. 11 and 12, it is noticed
that when the order of the mother wavelet is increased, the
values in the feature vectors are getting more concentrated
to vector x 6 , and the differences of the value of vector x 6
becomes larger between the feature vectors of different faults.
This shows good consistency with the analysis in Section IV,
Part C. As the frequency response of the mother wavelet
function with higher order has a dramatic reduction in the
overlapping region and sharper cutoff frequency. Minimum
leakage energy is thus expected during the wavelet decompo-
sition process.
2) Features of Ground Faults: Fig. 13 shows the extracted
features of the ground fault occurred in Zone 3. The
x-axis is the decomposition level and the y-axis is the energy
LI et al.: FAULT DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION IN MVDC SPSs
Fig. 13. Extracted features of negative line to ground fault in Zone 3 with
db10 wavelet.
variation. In this case, the sampling frequency is 40 kHz due to
the change of monitored signal, and the frequency bands of the
decomposition levels are provided in the Appendix, Table III.
As we can see, there is a significant increase in vector
x 1 and x 2 , which reflects the high frequency component of
background noise signal, as analyzed in Section II. Moreover,
the values of vector x 6 to x 9 also slightly increase, because the
bandwidth of these decomposition levels covers the switching
frequency of pervasive buck converters (600 Hz).
Through the above analysis, we can see that, the application
of WT-based MRA method and Parseval’s theorem, yields
a compact feature of the fault signal. Thus, less memory
space and computing time are required for implementation
compared with the fault detection methods that adopt directly
the sampled raw data or the WT coefficients. The extracted
features may be affected by the noise at the input signals,
however, this can potentially be reduced by denoising the input
signals by using a wavelet-based denoising method presented
in [45]. The obtained feature vectors with db10 wavelet are
then used as the inputs of ANN for pattern recognition, and
this process is detailed in the following section.
VI. C LASSIFICATION W ITH ANN
ANN has the capability of recognizing underlying relation-
ship between the input and output patterns. It can consider sev-
eral features of the input signals simultaneously and compare
the patterns according to their mutual similarity instead of the
hard thresholds. Of the different topologies, the feedforward
network is probably the most popular, and it constitutes more
than 80% of the current neural network applications for fault
diagnostic [46].
The basic multilayer feedforward network contains one
input layer, one output layer, and any number of hidden
layers in between [47], [48]. Currently, the design of network
configurations to solve a particular engineering problem is still
a trial and error process [46]. In this paper, the three layer
feedforward neural networks has been adopted for implement-
ing the proposed fault detection and classification method for
MVDC SPSs. The specific structure of the adopted three layer
feedforward neural networks is shown in Fig. 14.
2659
Fig. 14. Structure of a three layer feedforward neural network.
The three layer feedforward neural network has been
designed in this paper for nine inputs and two outputs. In the
proposed method, the inputs are the extracted feature vectors
through WT-based MRA technique, as described in Section IV.
The outputs are mathematically shown in (11) to indicate
whether the monitored part is under normal condition or a
fault condition, respectively
φ : R n → {0, 1}m
φ(x) = (c1 , c2 , . . . , ci , . . . , cm ) (10)
with
1 fault
ci = (11)
0 normal
where i = 1, 2, . . . , m. m is the number of output neurons, in
this case m equals to 2. n is the number of inputs and equals
to 9.
As stated before, the number of neurons in the hidden layer
has been selected by trial and error with the goal of reaching
better stability and high convergence rate. Different numbers
of neurons in the hidden layer have been tried and it has been
found that the feedforward networks with eight or more hidden
neurons are sufficient for this particular application, where
the training error is set to be lower than 0.001. However, to
reduce the computational burden of the proposed algorithm for
the purpose of the RT implementation, a feedforward network
with eight hidden neurons is chosen. It is to be noted that the
selected number of hidden layer may not be the optimal, the
number is chosen only if it satisfied the preset training error;
the optimal issue is out of the scope of this paper.
The log-sigmoid [49], [50] activation function is used in
both hidden and output layers of the network, because we want
to use binary outputs to indicate the fault types. The network
is trained in a supervised manner with the back propagation
function traingdm [49]–[51]. The weight and bias values of the
hidden and output layers are updated according to the gradient
descent with momentum. The actual output is compared with
the desired or target output. Depending on the error between
actual and target outputs, the weight of each connection and
the bias of each processing unit of the network are updated.
The training process of the network continues until the average
error of the entire training set reaches a defined error goal.
2660 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
TABLE I
C LASSIFICATION R ESULTS
A. Classification Results
After training with specific momentum constant and adap-
tive learning rate, the proposed technique is tested offline
in the MATLAB software package using appropriate set of
weights and biases, and the data collected from RT simulation
in RTDS. The training and testing cases include different fault
types (short circuit fault on dc bus, disturbance caused by
short circuit fault on ac side, ground fault in Zone 3, and
normal operations), and normal operations with disturbances
(such as load switching, capacitor switching). Forty cases
are used for training of each scenario with the proposed
algorithm, 240 cases are used for testing. These training and
testing cases are obtained randomly with varying time of
occurrence, fault location (in step of 0.1 p.u), fault resistances
(in step of 0.01 p.u), and the load in the zone (in step of
1 ohm). The randomly generated scenarios may consist of
some extreme cases and thus can demonstrate an overall
statistical performance of the proposed algorithm.
Since the outputs of a multilayer neural network rarely
give exactly the target of zero or one on each output neuron,
the pattern was deemed to have been correctly classified if
the error on each output neuron is within 0.3 [52]. If any of the
outputs takes a value between 0.3 and 0.7, this is considered
as error in the detection of the pattern.
Accuracy defined as in (13) is used as the metric for deter-
mining the performance of ANN, which can be mathematically
defined as follows:
 
Ne
A = 100 · 1 − (12)
N
where A represents the accuracy, Ne and N represent the
number of classification errors and the total number of tested
examples, respectively.
The results of the test cases are summarized in Table I.
Notice that, the algorithm is able to correctly identify the cases
with the accuracy of 99.58%, which shows the effectiveness
of the proposed algorithm to correctly classify the faults on
MVDC system.
The performance of the proposed method has also been
compared with other signal processing-based methods pro-
posed for fault detection and classification in MVDC power
systems, as shown in Table V. Method 1 (M1) directly uses
Fig. 15. Accuracy of the methods with different SNRs.
the sampled raw data as the inputs for ANN for classification.
Method 2 (M2) adopts all the DWT coefficients of the second
decomposition level as the inputs for a self-organizing maps.
Method 3 (M3) is the method proposed in this paper, which
feeds ANN with the features extracted through DWT MRA
and Parseval’s theorem.
Fig. 15 shows the classification accuracies of different
methods under various signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values
(from 20 to 50 dB). The value of SNR is defined as follows:
 
Ps
SNR(dB) = 10 log (13)
Pn
where Ps is the power of the original signal and Pn is that of
the noise. A typical SNR value of 30 dB is equivalent to a
peak noise magnitude of nearly 3.5% of the original signal.
As can be noted from Fig. 15, the proposed method in this
paper, M3, shows the best robustness under different levels of
SNRs. The overall accuracy can still reach 97.08% even under
the noise level of 20dB. The performance of M1 is easily
affected by the noises, due to the directly use of sampled raw
data as the inputs for classification. Moreover, it has the most
complex structures and highest computation cost for training.
Although M2 takes the DWT coefficients of the second
decomposition level as input vectors, its performance also
decreases a lot with the noise levels. Because the use of only
one decomposition level may not reflect the characteristics of
the original signal, and some of the properties of the original
signal will be lost.
A comparative study of the classification accuracies with the
features obtained from Parseval’s-based energy technique and
other statistical extraction techniques (such as, mean, variance,
rms, and entropy) has been done, and the results are shown in
Fig. 16. It can be noticed that, the proposed energy technique
has the best accuracy and is robust with noise.
Although only the occurrence of time, fault location, fault
resistances, and the loads are considered during the perfor-
mance studies of the classifier, the obtained scheme has the
generality for different fault and operating conditions. The real
system may have different operating conditions and different
system configurations from the cases that we have studied
here, in these cases, higher classification performance could be
guaranteed only by retraining the neural network with newly
obtained features.
LI et al.: FAULT DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION IN MVDC SPSs 2661

Fig. 16. Accuracies of different feature extraction techniques.

Fig. 18. Real view of experiment configuration in ACS lab.

Fig. 17. Schematic structure of the RT testing platform.

VII. RT V ERIFICATION
The algorithm of WT-based MRA and ANN-based fault
diagnosis algorithm can be implemented for online applica-
tions at an affordable cost [53], [54]. Thus, it is feasible
to embed the proposed fault diagnosis algorithm into local
monitoring devices. It is to be noted that, the neural network
is trained offline with the obtained data from RTDS and then
tested online. This section illustrates in detail the RT imple-
mentation and testing of the proposed algorithm.
The schematic structure of the RT platform for online Fig. 19. Correct recognition of short circuit fault on primary dc bus.
testing of the proposed fault detection algorithm is shown in
Fig. 17, and a picture of the experimental setup is shown in
Fig. 18. The platform is a HIL setup based on RTDS [28] compiled in Microsoft Visual C++ to generate Model.dll,
and LabVIEW RT target [30]. The notional MVDC SPS is which is executed on the LabVIEW RT target. When the
implemented in RTDS and executed in RT. The monitored process is started, the samples of the monitored signals are
signals for fault detection are accessed via the analog output sent to the memory of the RT target, where they are processed.
board of RTDS, and fed to the RT target, where the proposed Fault detection and diagnosis are achieved by output the
fault detection and classification algorithm has been fully indicators in binary values from RT target.
implemented. Data acquisition in RT target is realized with One of the main design considerations during hardware
the field-programmable gate array card, a detailed description implementation is to minimize the cause of high frequency
of this module can be found in [30]. noise. Low-pass R-C antialiasing filter has been used at the
The C code of the proposed fault diagnosis algorithm input side (in the interface board, as shown in Fig. 18) to
that integrates WT-based MRA and ANN is generated from remove the high frequency component of the signal outside
MATLAB RT Workshop. The generated C code is then the sampling bandwidth. The cut off frequencies of the filters
2662 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
Fig. 20. Correct recognition of disturbance caused by short circuit fault on
ac side.
Fig. 21. Correct recognition of ground fault in Zone 3.
are set to half the sampling frequency. However, they also
introduce errors into the high frequency components just inside
the sampling bandwidth, which may affect the magnitudes of
the high frequency wavelet decompositions [55]. This problem
is solved by discarding the highest frequency detailed WCs,
which ultimately results in an effective sampling frequency
equal to half of the original sampling frequency. For example,
if the sampling frequency is 20 kHz, then the wavelet energies
are calculated using levels 2–10 WCs. This is equivalent to the
use of levels 1–9 components with a sampling frequency of
10 kHz.
The dc bus current and the indicator signals for the case of
short circuit fault on primary dc bus are shown in Fig. 19. It
clearly shows that the indicator signal (c1 ) changed its status
from low to high after the fault occurrence indicating that a
fault has been detected for the case of dc bus short circuit fault
(as illustrated in Fig. 14). In addition, the algorithm generated
the high indicator signal (c2 ) after the fault occurrence for the
case of disturbance caused by short circuit fault on ac side,
as shown in Fig. 20. Similarly, the corrected recognition of
ground fault has been shown in Fig. 21, where both of the
indicator signals are high after the occurrence of the fault.
VIII. C ONCLUSION
This paper proposes a method that integrates WT-based
MRA technique with ANN for fault detection and classifi-
cation in MVDC SPSs. The application issues of WT-based
MRA, such as selection of proper wavelet function and optimal
decomposition scales, are discussed and supported with sim-
ulation analysis. Taking WCs energy to generate the feature
vector, the db10 wavelet and scale 9 are chosen as mother
wavelet and the decomposition level of interest, respectively,
according to the criteria discussed in this paper. ANN is then
adopted to classify these extracted features to identify the fault
types automatically, with its strong capability of generalization
and training mechanism. Numerical simulation has been per-
formed to verify the capability of the proposed algorithm for
fault detection and the results show that promising accuracy
can be obtained for distinguishing different types of faults.
Finally, the proposed algorithm is implemented in LabVIEW
RT target for the purpose of online practical use. However,
more adjustments are needed with this obtained classifier to
make it be able to cope with specific system structures. To be
more precise, we need to train the ANN classifier first with
the data obtained from the new system.
Compared with the other methods, the adopted method
in this paper does not require interzone communication and
external signal injection. The main properties of the proposed
method are summarized as follows.
1) The WT-based MRA method provides an efficient way
to extract signal components at different frequency
bands.
2) The neural network provides an intelligent method and
a soft criterion for feature comparison.
3) The proposed algorithm decreases the computational
burden due to less input data (only nine values of the
feature vector), thus it supports RT online implementa-
tion.
4) The algorithm has a high accuracy and is robust to
various faults, its performance will not be affected by
changes in electrical parameters like fault resistance and
loads.
LI et al.: FAULT DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION IN MVDC SPSs 2663

A PPENDIX
TABLE II TABLE III
F REQUENCY BANDS OF D IFFERENT D ECOMPOSITION L EVELS F REQUENCY BANDS OF D IFFERENT D ECOMPOSITION L EVELS
FOR A NALYSIS OF G ROUND FAULTS FOR A NALYSIS OF S HORT C IRCUIT FAULTS

TABLE IV
C OMPARISON OF R ELATED FAULT D ETECTION M ETHODS FOR MVDC P OWER S YSTEMS

TABLE V
S IGNAL P ROCESSING -BASED M ETHOD FOR MVDC S YSTEM FAULT D ETECTION AND P ROTECTION
2664 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 63, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
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Weilin Li (S’10–M’13) received the B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. (Dr. Ing.) degrees in electrical engineering
from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an,
China, and the E.ON Energy Research Center, Insti-
tute for Automation of Complex Power Systems,
RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, in
2007, 2009, and 2013, respectively.
He is currently an Assistant Professor with the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Northwest-
ern Polytechnical University. His current research
interests include medium voltage dc power system,
integrated co-simulation, and power electronic applications in smart grid.
2665
Antonello Monti (M’94–SM’02) received the M.Sc.
(summa cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy,
in 1989 and 1994, respectively.
He started his career with Ansaldo Industria, Abu
Dhabi, UAE, and then with Politecnico di Milano
as an Assistant Professor. In 2000, he joined the
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA, as an Asso-
ciate and then a Full Professor. Since 2008, he has
been the Director with the Institute for Automation
of Complex Power System, E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen
University, Aachen, Germany. He has authored and co-authored more than
200 peer-reviewed papers published in international journals and in the
proceedings of international conferences.
Dr. Monti is an Associate Editor of the IEEE S YSTEMS J OURNAL.
Ferdinanda Ponci (M’00–SM’08) received the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, in 1998 and
2002, respectively.
She joined the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, University of South Carolina, Columbia,
SC, USA, in 2003, as an Assistant Professor, with
the Power and Energy Research Group, and was
promoted to Associate Professor in 2008. In 2009,
she was with the Institute for Automation of Com-
plex Power Systems, E.ON Research Center, RWTH
Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, where she is currently an Apl. Profes-
sor.