Design and construction of a PC-based partial discharge analyzer using FPGA

This paper presents the implementation of the PC-based PD (partial discharge) analyzer. This PD analyzer is capable of measuring both PD level and IEC integrated quantities and analyzing PD data stored in a 3-dimensional distribution. FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) is the main IC in digital part for circuits implementation to perform real-time data processing, controlling and interfacing to a PC. In the analysis process, the H_n(φ,q) distribution is derived from the recorded PD data stream. Fractal features are calculated from the surface of the distribution. Finally, automatic classification of defects is performed. Real-time measurement and display on a Windows98 platform are achieved by using the VxD device driver and the visual-style software developed in C++ language. The test result shows that the characteristic of the PD analyzer complies with IEC Publ. 60270