Chromatic processing of optoacoustic signals for identifying incipient faults on electric power equipment

Chromatic monitoring was first explored for tracing changes in the optical spectra returned from polychromatic modulators used as optical fibre sensors. Several such sensing systems have been developed and a number are undergoing system evaluation in the commercial area at present. The generic nature of the methodology has enabled it to be extended into new realms of information extraction-the acoustical domain, 2D feature identification etc. The authors explain the basis of the generic methodology via the specific example of tristimulus chromatic processing, then give examples of its use for fault condition identification in both optical and acoustical domains. The contribution concludes with an explanation of how the methodology is being extended into the multistimulus domain for extracting higher moments of information from complex signals of various kinds