Title :
Protection of Digital Telecom Exchanges Against Lightning Surges and Earth Faults
Author :
Subba Reddy, B. ; Verma, Alok Ranjan
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Indian Inst. of Sci., Bangalore, India
Abstract :
Low-power electronic devices used in digital telecom exchanges are vulnerable to surge voltages and currents primarily originating from natural lightning or due to the direct interactions between electric power and telecommunication lines, etc., causing the earth/ground potential rise, neutral potential rise, and faults in the system. The fault currents may flow directly to telecom lines or through the equipment to the customer´s premises, causing adequate damage to the equipment and personnel safety. In wireline applications, analog or digital, central office, exchanges, and subscriber sides have to be protected. Decisive protection and protective methods have to be employed for proper functioning of the equipment under overvoltage/overcurrent conditions. Current investigation reports some interesting results obtained on the recently developed high-voltage high-current protection cards used in digital telecom exchanges. The performances of protection cards both for the ring wave and hybrid wave surges are evaluated and presented. The surge generators required for the investigation are developed and fabricated in house as per the relevant telecom standards.
Keywords :
earthing; fault currents; overcurrent protection; overvoltage protection; surge protection; digital telecom exchange protection; earth-ground potential rise; electric power; fault currents; high-voltage high-current protection cards; hybrid wave surges; low-power electronic devices; natural lightning; neutral potential rise; overvoltage-overcurrent conditions; ring wave surges; surge currents; surge generators; surge voltages; telecommunication lines; Electron tubes; Generators; Grounding; Surge protection; Surges; Telecommunications; Voltage measurement; Digital telecom exchanges; digital telecom exchanges; earth faults; hybrid wave; lightning; over voltages; overvoltages; protection equipment; ring wave; simulation; surge generator; telecommunication;
Journal_Title :
Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TIA.2015.2430835