2004 11th International Conference on Harmonics and Quality of Power
A Novel Approach for Spectral Analysis of
Monitored Power Systems
MoisCs V. Ribeiro, SfudentMember, IEEE, Sanjit K. Mitra, L$e Fellow, IEEE, and JoHo Marcos T.
Romano, Senior Member, IEEE
Absfract -This paper presents a novel approach that
combines the adaptive and non-adaptive notch fdters, multilayer
perceptron neural network, and warped discrete Fourier
transform O F T ) to estimate amplitudes, frequencies and
phases of the fundamental and harmonic components in power
systems. Simulation results show that only 1.25 cycles of the
fundamental component are enough to pronde small frequency,
phase and amplitude error estimations.
-
Index Terms adaptive filters, amplitude estimation, digital
signal processing, discrete Fourier transform, frequency
estimation, power quality.
I. hTRODUCnON
R - ECENTLY, increasing efforts are being applied to
provide high level of power quality (PQ) than ever
before. It is well known that problems such as voltage sags,
voltage swells, transients, harmonics, inter harmonics,
momentary interruptions, and unbalances can cause machine
and equipment malfunctions, lost production and downtimes
[l-41. Most of these problems have increased in the market
deregulation environment due to an increase use of non-linear
loads, and electronic-based equipment in residences,
commercial centers, and industrial plants; an increase in the
connection of independent power producers (IPP's) with
poorly controlled synchronization; and the competition and
reluctance to exchange information, etc. [l]. As a result, new
functions have been introduced in the monitoring equipment
for PQ analysis enabling further application of appropriate
techniques to minimize the PQ problems. It is well known that
this equipment must he able to acquire at high sample rate,
analyze, store and transmit PQ information concerning the
monitoring point of the power system to fully characterize the
ongoing PQ problems [SI-[6]. Two strategies for monitoring
systems have been considered for providing continuous
evaluation of PQ parameters, which track the long-term trends
as well as the short-term events: 1) a centralized approach that
demands a large bandwidth for data transmission and huge
computational power in the central processing facility [7]; and
from Brazil.
Moists V. Ribeiro and Sanjit K. Mina are witb Depamnent of Electrical
and computer Engineering - university of califomia santa Barbara CA
93106, USA (e-mail: mribeim@iece.org. mitra@cce.ucsb.edu).
lo.%ohlarcos T. Romano is with DECOMEEECNNICAMP, caTbas, Same as
SP 13 081 970, Brazil (e-mail romano@deeom.fee.unicamp.br).
0-7803-8746-5/04/$20.00 02004 IEEE.
2) a decentralized approach that requires a powerful DSP in
the PQ monitoring equipment and low bandwidth [6]. In the
second strategy, it is assumed that low-complexity algorithms
are required to get a feasible and low-cost solution in the PQ
monitoring equipment.
As far as PQ is concemed, there has been an increasing
interest in the development of feasible, low-cost and accurate
algorithms to estimate amplitudes, frequencies, and phases of
the fundamental and harmonic components during the last
decades. To this end, several techniques such as the FFT,
notch filter, Kalman filter, and PLL have been proposed so far
[XI-[13]. However, computational complexity, accuracy and
time-consuming requirements have necessitated the
development of new algorithms for real-time DSP-based
implementation.
This paper proposes a feasible approach to estimate
amplitudes, 6equencies, and phases of the fundamental and
harmonic components. Essentially, an appropriate
combination of the warped discrete Fourier transform
(WDFT) [13], adaptive and non-adaptive notch filters, and
multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN) is suggested
to perform the aforementioned tasks. Simulation results
evaluating the performance of the proposed scheme under
several scenarios have shown that only 1.25 cycles of the
fundamental component are sufficient to provide amplitude,
frequency and phase estimations with high accuracy.
An outline of this paper is as follows. Section 11 briefly
discusses the ffequency estimation problem in the power
system and the ongoing DSP techniques applied to ffequency
estimation for PQ. It also provides the motivation for the
development of the proposed approach. Section I11 describes
the proposed approach. Section lV includes results of some
computer simulations. Finally, Section V presents the
conclusions.
11. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The minimal requirement or basic feature for a good
frequency tracker or estimator is the so-called unhiasedness in
the noise-free setting. In other words, if a monitored discrete
constant, then the angular frequency estimator is expected to
provide an estimate i~,,~ that, at steady state, is exactly as the
WH,Q. The majority of the frequency estimators
255

advanced so far (FFT, WDFT, notch filter, Kalman filter,
PLL, etc [8]-[12]) are based on this simple assumption.
However, the efficiency and accuracy of all these prior
methods are influenced by the features of the power line
signal, which is given by [6]
44 = S H ( 4+ SIH (n)+ S r ( 4+ v ( n ) ,
and v ( n ) is iid N ( 0 , a ; ) . The terms s H ( n ) , s I H ( n ) ,s r ( n ) , The following section introduces the proposed new approach
and v ( n ) refer to harmonic, inter-harmonic, transient, and for amplitude, frequency and phase estimation purpose in the
background noise components, respectively. A H > , mH, , power systems.
O H , ; , ArH.j, o I H jand
, QIH,j are i-th harmonic and j-th
inter-harmonic component values of amplitude, angular
frequency and phase, respectively. ( n ) is the k-th transient
component.. As can be seen from (I), the harmonics, inter-
harmonics, transients and background noise do influence the
performances and behaviors of all methods for amplitude,
frequency and phase estimations. In other words, these noises
decrease the convergence rate and the accuracy of the
estimation method used because the signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) value at the input of the estimation algorithm is given
by
SNR = I 0 loglo( 51,
N-I
p = n=o
kH.0 Cn)p
N '
(7)
is high. In (5)-(7) s H , o ( n ) , s H , , ( n ) , and sIH,,(n) are the
fundamental, the i-th harmonic and the j-th inter-harmonic
component samples, respectively, of the monitored signal; and
N is the length of the analyzed signal. It is evident that the
S N R can be increased by eliminating all harmonics, inter-
harmonics and transients components. In such a case, the new
S N R value is given by
~
Equation (8) demonstrates that the SNR,, value is much
(1) higher than SNR observed in the presence of high-power
disturbance in the monitored power line. The extension of this
idea to other harmonic components is straightfonvard. We
point out that this idea can be extended to other approaches
based on Kalman filter, PLL, etc.
Another interesting issue concerning frequency estimation
is the use of this information to estimate amplitudes and
phases of the fundamental and barmonic components. To this
end, that FFT technique has been widely used in PQ
applications due to its low-complexity. However, the leakage
problem in the FFT computation can degrade the performance
(4) of this technique. Another drawback associated with FFT is
the high sample rate required to get a reasonable resolution for
the estimation of all harmonic component parameters [12].
111. THEPROPOSED
METHOD
Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the proposed method, to
he called notch filter-warped discrete Fourier transform (NF-
WDFT) scheme, for the amplitude, frequency and phase
estimations of the fundamental and harmonic components.
This approach can be seen as an improved version of the
proposed solution based on DFT and WDFT in [I I], which
we call DFT-WDFT approach. The main advantage of NF-
WDFT approach is its capability of getting good estimation of
fiequencies, phases and amplitudes of several harmonic
components. In our method, the combination of the WDFT
and MLPNN techniques perform frequency and amplitude
estimations under a less severe SNR condition given by (6).
I
I I
-, "J4
Fig. 1. The NF-WDF? Scheme.
In this scheme, the NFo block implements a second-order
adaptive notch filter (ANF) based on higher order statistics
(HOS) [IO]. The second-order ANF is applied to track a
coarse estimation of the frequency of the fundamental
component. Thereafter, a better estimation of the amplitude
and frequency of the fundamental component is performed by
256
the WDFTo block. The WDFTo block implements a WDFT
with N / 4 basis vectors, whose warped frequencies are near
the coarse estimation obtained by using the second-order
ANF. N is the length of the analyzed signal. Next, a Taylor
expansion of order 2 is fitted to the maximum magnitude of
WDFT sample and its left and right neighbors as suggested in
[Ill. In a final step, a MLPNN technique [I61 is applied to
estimate the amplitude, frequency and phase values from the
warped amplitude, frequency, and phase values obtained by
using the WDFT.
After that, the second-order notch filter in each NF block is
configured' based on the frequency of each harmonic
component. Note that, the parameter of the second-order notch
filter implemented in the NFo block is based on the Go value,
while the NFl,...,NFH blocks implement second-order notch
filters with notch frequencies equal
uiH,j
<U: because the characteristics of notch filter; and
is the phase delay introduced by the previous notch
filters The S N R value of the signal given by (1 I ) is equivalent
to the SNRNER given by (8). This is a very interesting result
because a low-power noise contributes to the improvement of
the performance of estimation techniques such as FFT,
WDFT, Kalman, PLL, etc.
The motivation behind the use of N-point WDFT, which is
a special case of the NDFT (nonuninform DFT [14]) is that
this transform performs a nonuniform mapping of the
analyzed signal on the unit cycle and requires few samples to
estimate the frequency of a sinusoidal signal [ 111. The same
kind of nonuniform mapping can be achieved by using the
chup transform at a higher computational complexity, but
demands a higher computational complexity. The N-point
to
WDFT is given by

51
&H,i = icjH,o< x , i = 1,..., M . The WDFT, ,...,WDFTMblocks
implement a WDFT with only three hasis vectors and make -j-k
2n "
use of the same procedure applied to the WDFT, and MLPNN
X [ k ]"
=4y x ( ~ ) [ ~-j-k* + ~ ,k=O,...,N-1, (14)
blocks to estimate the amplitude and phase of the harmonic
components. The z-transform of the transfer function of the i- l+ae
tb second-order notch filter is given by [12]
where a* denotes the complex conjugate value of a . The
1 + U$ + 2-2 -
-
I-2cos(q)z-' +z-* mapping is controlled by the warping parameter a . By
H , ( z )=
1 + p , a , d + p:z-' 1 - 2p, cos(y)z-' + piz-' selecting a suitably complex-valued warping parameter, we
i = O , ..., M can place a large number of frequency samples in the main
lobe of the signal spectrum resulting in a good estimation of
(9) tbe frequency and amplitude values.
For stability, the constant pi is selected somewhat less The coarse estimation of the coefficient a. of the second-
than a unity. Assuming that the delay is zero and pi is close order adaptive notch filter is obtained by using the linear
to an unity, then it can be seen from Fig. 1 that predictive (LP) method based on the diagonal fourth-order
xi (n) = mixed cumulant slice (FOMCS) of the input signal that is
expressed by [lo]

1
) AH,ocos(nwH,o+
x(n + d H , o - + AOH,,), if i = 0,
cos(nwH,j
Xi-i(n+d~,i-i)-C;.=~A~ ,j + @ ~ +, A
j e~,j),
?*(r)cL)= ? x ( r , r , r ) ( L )I =(c:ibx(n)x'(n
- +r)
L
L-1 1
otherwise, -3z:Ibx(n)x(n + r)z,=,x (n+ TI) (15)
(10) r = 0,..., P- I, 2 5 P 5 L - 1

x(n+dH,O)-xo(n), if i=O, for estimating the second-order ANF coefficient given by

XSH,; ( n )=
{ - x ~ ( n ) , , (11)
~ ~ - ~ ( n + d ~ , ~ - ~ ) otherwise, U, = -2c0swH~,. (16)
=AH,i cos(n@H,i+ o H , i +Ao~,i)+~~H,i(n) Using the estimated diagonal FOMCS values, the least-
square solution of tbe forward linear prediction equations that
relate the coefficient a, to FOMCS values is given by

do = -2Cos&",, = -('DT'D)-'"q, (17)

where 0=[?,(1)'L' ... t z ( P - 2 ) [ 9 ] 7 and
cp = [?,(2)(') + ;=(O)") ... ?,(P- +~x(P-3)'"]'.
Finally, we can point out that the relation between the
where x , ( n ) denotes the output of the i-th notch filter;
amplitudes, frequencies and phases in the warped and
i = 0, ..., M ; dH,iis a delay inserted by the i-th second-order traditional frequency domains are nonlinear and not well
notch filter; xsM,,(n) denotes the signal applied to the WDFT; defined yet. As a result, the phase, amplitude, and frequency
vSH,,(n) is a colored background noise whose power estimations of the i-th harmonic component are given by

251
 achieved if the f, is increased. In low SNR condition we
observed that the ANF does not converge. So, in this case, we
consider the coarse frequency estimation equal to 60 Hz and
(19) perform the WDFT implemented in the WDFT, block twice.
In order to analyze the amplitude estimation performance
of the NF-WDFT under the presence of harmonic components
(20) in the monitored power system we considered U: = -20 dB.
-
respectively. Note that A H , i , &,H.i, and
- are the warped 1.25 cycles of fundamental component is used by NF-WDFT
and DFT-WDFT approaches at f, = 60 x 64 Hz while the
amplitude, angular 6equency, and phase values; ASH,i
FFT used 1 (128-point FFT) and 2 (256-point FFT) cycles at
denotes the distortion generated by the previous notch filters; f,=128x60 Hz [7]. Tables 2, 3 and 4 show the real
g A ( . ), ga(.),and go(.) represent the nonlinear mapping
amplitude values of fundamental and harmonic components
performed by the MLPNN, respectively. To get an efficient (first column) as well as their estimated values obtained by
MLPNN we also consider a second-order optimization NF-WDFT, DFT-WDFT and FFT.
method called modified version of the Scaled Conjugated The results in Tables 2, 3 and 4 have been obtained by
Gradient method (MVSCGM) as in [I61 for the MLPNN considering fo equal to 57.0 Hz, 60.01 Hz and 62.50 Hz,
trainiig procedure.
respectively. The data in each table has been obtained by
performing 5000 Monte Carlo simulations. The structure of
W . SIMULATION R!2SULTS
the MLPNN for the amplitude estimation is 2 x 5 x 1 . As it can
This section compares the performances of the NF-WDFT, he observed the NF-WDFT, at low sampling rate, shows
DFT-WDFT and FFT approaches. The harmonic information better amplitude estimation than the 256-point FFT.
was obtained 60m [I51 and synthetically generated using Particularly, we can also observe that for low amplitude
MATLAB. Table 1 shows the results obtained by using the values much better estimation results are attained by using
NF-WDFT and DFT-WDFT (with 64-point DFT) approaches NF-WDFT.
to estimate the frequency of the fundamental component of a With regarding to how the performance of the amplitude
signal given by estimation technique influences the THD evaluation, the last
x ( n ) = sH(n)+ v(n) = AH,ocos(noH,, + e,.,)+ TOW of Table 2, 3 and 4 shows the real and estimated THD.
(21) From these results, it is clear that NF-WDFT provides a
1 ; = 1 A H , k i cos(BkiaH,O + @ H , k i ) + v ( n ) , ki = 3 x i , superior THD estimation than other approaches. At the end, it
is worth mentioning that the NF-WDFT remains a delay to
where i = 0, ...,7 are uniform random variables in the provide a coarse frequency estimation performed by the
interval [0,2x) and v ( n ) is a zero mean Gaussian noise with adaptive notch filter and to get the steady-state conditions of
a variance c:. The values A H , k i ,i = O ,.._, 7 are equal to the notch filters.
To analyze the performance of the (1 x 3 x 1) MLPNN to
1.000, 0.757, 0.426, 0.145, 0.025, 0.009, 0.058, and 0.007,
estimate the phase of the sinusoid component 6 0 m the warped
respectively. The chosen sample rate is f, = 64 x 60 Hz. The
phase values, we consider the signal
OH 0
values for f H , o=-f, are 57.43 Hz,60.11 Hz, and 62.89 x(n) = COs(nOH,O + @H,O) 3 (22)
2rr
Hz,respectively. 1.25 cycles of fundamental component are
used by the NF-WDFT and DFT-WDFT approaches. The where mH,o =- 2n60'11 and So is an uniform random variable
60 x 64
performance is evaluated in terms of S N R value given by (5) in the interval [0,2n). For the training and testing procedures,
and performing 5000 Monte Carlo simulations. Also, we
we generated 3600 and 36000 sequences { x ( n ) } , respectively.
'assume pi =0.9985 and lal=0.9. The structure of the
The length of each sequence {x(rr)} is equal to 1.25 cycles of
MLPNN for the 6equency estimation is 2 x 6 ~ 1 It. means
the fundamental component. The performance of the MLPNN
that the MLPNN has two input, 6 neurons in the hidden layer,
in terms of MSE value is shown in Table 5. As it can be seen,
and one output.
the MLPNN attains very good results. In fact, the second-
As can be seen, in all cases the proposed method
order optimization method provides an efficient and simple
outperforms the DFT-WDFT based method. Also, it can be
MLPNN for this kind of estimation.
observed that under low SNR Conditions the NF-WDFT
provides a much better estimation than the DFT-WDFT [ll].
In fact, an SNR improvement is observed in the input of
WDFTO block of the NF-WDFT approach that results in a
good condition for frequency estimation. Although it is not
showed, we also noticed that better estimation results can be

258
 TABLE1. FREQUENCY ESmnONPERFORMANCE

* (I) NF-WDFT
** (II) DFT-WDFT
TABLE
2. AMPLITWOE AND TIu)ESTMATION
PERFORMANCE fundamental and harmonic components. Also, it can be point
out that the proposed method attains better results than
previous approaches for amplitude and frequency estimations.
Issues related to finite-precision implementation with delta
and shift operators as well as comparison with Kalman and
PLL techniques are under investigation by the authors.

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259