Low-complexity leakage current acquisition system for transmission line insulators employing GSM voice channel

With the rapid advancements in electronics and in communication infrastructures, the deployment of low-complexity devices for power system monitoring has become an active area of research. For the large-scale deployment of monitoring devices, robust and economical remote data acquisition systems for power system monitoring are required. Keeping this in mind, the scheme of a remote leakage current acquisition system for high-voltage insulators that may be employed for remote monitoring purposes is described. A low-complexity method is adopted for the extraction of harmonic information from the leakage current signal. Unlike existing remote insulator-monitoring techniques that employ a dedicated fibre-optic network and satellite communication, the mobile communication voice channel is used to communicate the data to a central location for analysis. This provides an economical solution for the remote monitoring of insulators that may be used for large-scale deployment.