XXXII NATIONAL SYSTEMS CONFERENCE, NSC 2008, December 17-19, 2008

REMOTE CONDITION MONITORING OF ELECTRIC

MOTORS USING LABVIEW
Sutej Reddy
Student, M.Tech
sutejace@gmail.com

Dr. S. P. Gupta
Professor
spgfee@gmail.com
Electrical Engineering Department
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Roorkee 247667
Email: spgfee@gmail.com
Fax: +91-1332-286351

failure detection, from a remotely located control

station.
II. Development of Monitoring System

Abstract
The prime objective of this paper is to
present an efficient remote condition monitoring
system for bearing fault identification in electric
motors. A diagnosis system has been developed,
possibly for the first time, by using advanced signal
processing techniques such as wavelet analysis. The
paper deals with:
1) The development of LabVIEW based remote
condition monitoring system and real time data
acquisition from the remotely placed induction
motors.
2) The extraction of features of the diagnostic value
from the vibration signals to identify the bearing
faults in induction motors.
The main advantage of remote monitoring is that it
enables simultaneous monitoring of a number of
motors of industries located at different places from a
common point through internet, online.
Keywords: Electric motors,
Bearing, condition monitoring

LabVIEW,

Dr. Vinod Kumar

Professor
vinodfee@gmail.com

a) Hardware setup: A remote monitoring system

has been developed in the laboratory, possibly for
the first time, as a significant step in the ongoing
research on online condition monitoring of electric
motors.
A brief description of the system is as follows.
The basic functions of monitoring system
are sensing, signal conditioning, data acquisition
and signal processing. Each function has many
parameters with different specifications. In the
present work, the monitoring system uses motor
current and vibration parameters to determine the
machine condition. The selection of the sensing
elements depends on the limit of changes of the
machine variables, desired accuracy and the
monitoring method. Machine variables such as
three phase stator currents in the case of induction
motor, speed, vibration (radial and horizontal) that
cover the entire requirement to recognize the
expected types of faults, are selected for
monitoring.
Speed
sensor,
piezoelectric
accelerometer and ac current clamps are used to
measure the mentioned machine variables.

Wavelet,

I. Introduction
Condition monitoring of rotating electrical
machines is a well researched subject and is
potentially important to industry [1]. Of particular
importance would be automatic detection and
recognition of faults, where an early warning of
failure can prevent escalation of the problem and
larger damages. The fault signatures of the motor
can be obtained by recording vibration signals of
the motor body. In the case of the electric motors
located in the hazardous and non-accessible
environments, monitoring of motor needs to be
carried out from a remote location. The remote
monitoring also helps in sharing of the data of a
number of motors online and the subsequent
diagnosis. Advances in sensors, software tools like
LabVIEW and availability of internet provides the
necessary technologies for effective incipient

Most of the sensors provide outputs in the

form of electrical signals (digital or analog) and the
level of the output and the linearity with the input
needs to be conditioned. A signal conditioning
circuit is developed to make the signal levels
compatible with the NIDAQ 6024E. In the present
work the analog signals are transferred to data
acquisition card(NIDAQ 6024E) through BNC2120 connector (Fig. 1). The speed of data
acquisition system and the number of inputs to be
scanned are controlled by the LabVIEW software.

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IM
Voltages
&
Currents

Vibration

Load

Speed

Signal
Conditioning
Circuit

BNC-2120
Connector
Accessory

PCI6024E
NI DAQ

LABVIEW
G
Programming

Server VI

Client VI

Fig. 1 Basic Schematic Diagram of Remote Monitoring System

The server VI is divided into 5 Blocks:

1. Data-Acquisition Block
2. TCP/IP Block
3. Output Generation Block
4. Excel sheet Creation Block
5. Multiple Client Maintenance Block

b) Software development: The software

development consists of two phases namely
1. Signal acquisition and transfer
2. Frequency Analysis of signal for fault detection.
The first phase, signal acquisition and transfer,
consists of development of server and client virtual
Instruments while the second phase consists of
wavelet analysis of the acquired vibration signal.

1. Data-Acquisition Block
The first block of this server VI reads the
DAQ device and configures it by taking the scan
rate, buffer size and the number of channels used as
input. This is done using the AI (Analog Input)
Config and AI Start tools. We specify the port
through which the DAQ card reads instantaneous
samples.

Development of server VI:

The server VI performs Real-time Data
acquisition of the following eight machine
parameters through the eight channels of BNC2120 connector:
Three-Phase Voltages using 3 channels.
Three-Phase Currents using 3 channels.
Rotor Speed using a Speed Sensor on the 7th
channel and Vibration using the 8th channel.

2. TCP/IP Block
The main function of this block is data
transfer.The server "listens" for a connection. The
listen loop of the server is responsible for
recognizing the requests from a possible client.
The client must make a call to the correct IP
address (the IP address of the server) and the
correct port on the server computer which is
common in both the Server and Client. The port
here referred to is a software port. When the server
receives a request, a connection is established. The
phraseology is that a connection is "opened". After
the connection is opened, the server needs to
prepare the data for transmission in the agreedupon format. The server may refresh the data as
desired. When data transfer is completed, the server
closes the connection.

The server VI in LabBVIEW accesses the

Drive through the Data Acquisition Card. After
access, it displays various instantaneous machine
waveforms of three phase voltages, currents, Speed
and Vibration. The server VI also stores digital
values of sampled waveforms in Excel sheets at
desired location in the computer. Then the Server is
capable of real time data transfer to a convenient
location if the IP address of the server computer is
known. The Server also allows multiple clients to
acquire data from it. The flowchart for server VI is
given in Fig. 2

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multiple users to access the Server simultaneously.

It uses the d-queue (First in First out) logic for
serving the multiple clients.
The sub VI is similar to that of subroutine
in the high level programming languages that is
dedicated to perform an assigned task. This sub VI
allows multiple users to access the server VI
simultaneously by storing the requests of the clients
in a d-queue.
Development of Client VI:
In order for the server VI to function there
has to be a receiver at the location from where data
is being transferred, called client VI. To establish a
link between the server and the client, the client VI
will require the IP address of the server computer.
Also the port at which data is being acquired must
match with the port of the server through which
data is being sent.
In the client VI, first TCP block opens the
connection. The connection is specified by the IP
address and the port number of the server. Both the
IP address and the port number must be known in
order to get the data. Once the connection is open,
inside the loop a TCP/IP Read block waits for data.
The first data received should be the number of
bytes in the data string. The integer "2" at the input
of the TCP/IP Read block indicates that the TCP/IP
Read block waits for two bytes of data. The data
received - the number of bytes in the data string - is
converted to an integer and forms an input to the
next TCP/IP Read block. The output of the first
block is the number of bytes that the second
TCP/IP Read block should wait for in the data
string. The flow chart for client VI is given in
Fig.3.
Blocks in Client VI

Fig. 2 Flow chart for server VI

The Client VI is divided into three Blocks:

1. Data Transfer from Server Block.
2. Excel sheet Creation Block.
3. Output Generation Block.

3. Output Generation block

After the data acquisition, the digital data
must be displayed at the server and also should be
transferred simultaneously to the client. The
transfer takes place through TCP/IP block and
display of digital data at server is done through
Output generation block.
4. Excel sheet Creation Block
This block allows the user to save
instantaneous data samples in the form of an excel
sheet for later use and analysis. The number of
samples depends on the sampling rate which is
input in the data acquisition block. The samples
from all the eight channels are stored column wise
in the sheet. When the server VI is run, it prompts
the user whether to save the data.

1. Data Transfer from Server Block:

This block starts with the TCP open function
followed by the TCP write and TCP read functions.
Connection ID parameter of all these functions
gives a network connection reference number that
uniquely identifies the TCP connection needs to be
closed. The received data needs to be unflattened
from the string format and again typecasted. The
last function of this block in the sequence is TCP
close. The functions of the other two blocks are
same as those of Server blocks but with Client
perspective.

5. Multiple Client Maintenance Block

This block is an integral part of the Server
VI. The main function of this block is to allow

Conversation between the Server VI and the

Client VI: The server runs two loops. In the outer
loop, the following is taken care of:

314

When a request arrives:

The request from the client must be directed to
the correct IP address of the server (the "phone
number") and the correct port (the "extension at
that phone number"). The request must contain the
IP address of the client so that the server can send
the data to the correct IP address. When a request
has been received and a connection established,
then - and only then - does the inner loop begin to
operate.
To service the request, the server must take a
measurement - in the inner loop - and send the
results. The inner loop operates repeatedly at a
specified time interval. Since measurement string
length might be variable, the first thing that the
server has to do is examine the string length and
transmit a value for the string length.
III. Analysis of signal for Fault identification
Feature selection and extraction is an
important part of the diagnostic scheme. The
vibration signal acquired in the Data Acquisition
Block of server VI needs to be processed for the
Fault identification. It is this processed signal that
has to be transferred to the remote client, thus
enabling the observer at the remotely located
station to comment on the health of the remote
system. A number of parameters can be used to
characterize the vibration signal. It is therefore
important that these parameters reflect features that
characterize the fault. Precise definitions of these
parameters become more important with computer
aided analysis. Therefore the next step is to extract
the features from the vibration signals for the
identification of fault (bearing) in the machine.
Time and frequency domain analyses are the two
methods used in the condition monitoring
applications. In the present work, frequency
domain technique known as wavelet analysis is
used for this purpose.
Wavelet Analysis: Fourier Transform
gives the frequency information of the signal,
which means that it tells us how much is the
amplitude of each frequency component in the
signal, but it does not tell us when in time these
frequency components exist. This information is
not required when the signal is stationary.
Generally most of the fault signals are non
stationary, hence by using wavelet analysis one can
determine the existence of fault frequency
components along with their time of appearance.
The Mother wavelet used in this work is db3 and
the level of decomposition is three. Fig. 4
represents the DWT wavelet packet decomposition
of level3 for the vibration signal in Labview. The
cumulation of all these DWT coefficients gives the
frequency response of the vibration signal.

Fig. 3 Flowchart for client VI

The measurement system is initialized. There is
a TCP/IP listener. This listener waits for a message
from a remote computer indicating that the remote
computer is soliciting data. In essence, the
program is "hung" until that request arrives, and the
second loop doesn't start operating until a request
message arrives. What actually happens is that the
outer loop keeps running (as quickly as possible)
checking every time whether a request has arrived.

315

Vibration: A Piezoelectric accelerometer, PU601R, connected to the 8th channel of BNC-2120 is

used to pick up vibration at the bearing cap end.
Now, the Server VI should be run continuously on
the remote location and the following inputs have
to be given on the front panel of the VI:
Port: A free I/O port number of the processor on
which data can be acquired.
Message/Header Info: Any message that has to be
sent to the client can be written here.
Scan Rate: Number of samples to acquire per
second. The limit of the DAQ Card is 200 ks/sec.
Buffer Size: It is the number of scans each buffer
will hold.
(a)

Approximation

Instruction for CLIENT VI:

1. LabVIEW version 6.1 or above should be
installed on the Computer to which remote data is
to be transferred.
2. Remote Machine IP address has to be entered in
the front panel of the client VI.
3. The serial port number through which data can
be transferred has to be entered. This port number
should match with that of the server VI.
4. Now, the client VI should be run continuously
and on running, the client VI will prompt the
option whether to save data in an excel sheet or not.

(b) Detail

Figure. 4 DWT-Based Multiresolution Analysis

The parent signal is decomposed in (a)

approximation and (b) detail at level 1. The level 1
approximation is then decomposed to get
approximation and detail at level 2.The
approximation at level 2 is the summation of the
approximation and detail at level 3. As the level
increases, we obtain lower frequency components,
or large-scale approximation and detail, of the
signal. We can approximate the DWT using filter
banks. When the decomposition is applied to both
the approximation coefficients and the detail
coefficients, the operation is called wavelet packet
decomposition.

V Results & Discussions

IV. Operation of Monitoring system

Instructions for SERVER VI:
1. LabVIEW of version 6.1 or above should be
installed in the Computer.
2. A DAQ Card (PCI-6023E/6024E/6025E) should
be connected in the PCI slot in the Motherboard
and its drivers should be installed.
3. An interface between the machine and the
computer e.g. BNC-2120, SCB-68, CB-68 etc.
which is compatible with the DAQ device should
be connected and its various channels are used to
acquire data.
Requirements of different signals:
Voltage: Three transformers are used to step down
the voltage coming from the 3-phase ac supply.
The Three output voltages from the secondary side
of the transformers are given to 3 channels of the
BNC-2120.
Current: The three-phase current output from the
Induction machine is converted into voltage signal
using AC-Current Clamps and output is given to
another 3 channels of the BNC-2120
Speed: The Speed of the machine is measured
using a speed sensor MB-B/C/X (Magnetic Base
Model) and the output is given to one channel of
BNC-2120.

Fig. 5 Front panel of the Server VI showing (a) voltages

(b) currents (c) speed (d) vibration in time domain and
(e) vibration in frequency domain

Fig. 5 gives the Graphical User Interface

developed at the server, i.e. the location at which
the electric motor is located. This sever VI displays
three phase voltages, three phase currents, speed
and the wavelet processed vibration signal along

316

other bearing faults (outer race, ball defect, cage

defect etc.) have been successfully verified by this
system.

with the vibration signal of the motor. The GUI

developed at the client ,i.e. the remote location
from which health of the machine is being
monitored is similar to that of server GUI, but the
back-end programming differs from that of
servers. The back-end programming of both the
server and client VIs are described briefly in the
previous sections.
The developed Monitoring system is
tested for the bearing fault identification of a
laboratory motor at a remotely placed location
through the internet. With the prior knowledge of
the fault frequency components, calculated by
empirical relations, the wavelet processed vibration
signal appearing in the client VI is diagnosed for
the fault identification. The monitoring system
developed is independent of the operating system
of the PC. The client VI waits for the preset amount
of time to get connected to the server after which it
displays a message connection timed out.
For the identification of different types of
bearing faults, the test motor in the laboratory is
run with different defective bearings those
characterize the faults.
The specifications of the laboratory motor
and its bearing fault frequency components that are
expected to exist in the vibration signal are given
below.
Specifications of Lab motor (induction motor):-7.5
kw, 10A, 415V,1500 rpm, connected squirrel
cage rotor.

Fig 5 Zoomed view of Vibration signal along with

frequency spectrum in client VI

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper a remote condition monitoring system
has been developed using LabVIEW. This
developed system enables the transfer of the digital
data simultaneously from the plant location to the
several remotely placed control stations through
internet or any other transmission networks like
LAN, WAN e.tc. Particular attention has been paid
to the wavelet analysis of the vibration signal for
demonstrating the condition monitoring of the
induction motor. The developed system has been
tested for the bearing fault identification of the
Laboratory test motor. A key feature of this work is
the development of the sophisticated GUI at the
server and the client locations thus facilitating the
operators at both the ends with not only customized
and user friendly but also efficient remote
condition monitoring system.

Bearing Type db=15mm, pd =65mm, n=7, =0o

(NBC)
fo
Frequency (Hz)

fi

fb

fc

64.5 103.4 49.3 9.2

Table 1 The Magnitude of Key Frequencies for the Bearing

used in the Test Motor.

fo Outer race frequency component.

fi Inner race frequency component. (NBC)
fb Bearing fault frequency component.
fc Cage fault frequency component.
A typical result of the laboratory test
motor is given Fig. 5 for demonstrating the
effectiveness of the system. For the sake of fault
identification the vibration signal along with its
frequency spectrum window in the client VI is
zoomed and presented below. The result is
obtained at 75% load and rated speed. The machine
is run with a bearing having inner race fault. The
harmonic spectrum shows a prominent component
near 100Hz. This component must be due to inner
race fault since it is close to the predicted
characteristic frequency of inner race ( fi ) of
103.4Hz (Table 1). In a similar way, a number of

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