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International Journal of Advanced Research Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJARTET)

Vol. 4, Special Issue 19, April 2017

Automatic underground cable fault locator

using GSM
Summi Thomas (ECE)
A.Vimenthani (ECE)
Kaleeswari.(Prof /ECE)
Department of Electronics and Communication engineering
Dhaanish Ahmed College of Engineering, Chennai

ABSTRACT the manpower resource is not utilized, but also the

The main aim of the project is to detect and locate the
fault in underground cable . In the urban areas,the
electrical cable runs in undergrounds instead of overhead
lines.Whenever the fault occur the repairing process
becomes difficult.It is very difficult to identify the exact
location of the fault in underground power cable line.
This project will ensure a shorter response time for
technical crew to rectify these faults . Fault occur due to
short circuit fault, low voltage fault , high voltage fault.
Previously proposed technique is used to identify short
circuit fault only. This project is used to detect not only
detect short circuit fault but also detect ,low voltage fault,
high voltage fault.The system developed here works on
the basis of Ohm’s law.The proposed technique is used
not only for identification but also it is used to send the
detail information about the fault to the authority using
GSM and also it cut the power supply on that particular
location for the security of the people .It also used to
display the type of the fault in LCD display. Whenever a
fault occurs in a cable the buzzer produces the sound to
alert and to take an immediate action
restoration time may vary depending on the reliability
of the outage information. As such, deriving an
efficient technique to locate a fault can improve
system reliability. Use of underground power cable is
expanding due to safety considerations and enhanced
reliability in the distribution and transmission
systems in recent times. Due to safety reasons and
high power requirements in densely populated areas,
use of underground cable has seen a sharp hike in
recent times .Till last decade’s cables were made to
lay overhead and currently we use underground
cable. Because the underground cable are not affected
by any adverse weather condition such as storm,
snow, heavy rainfall as well as pollution .But when
any fault occur in cable, then it is difficult to locate
fault So we will move to find the exact location of
fault. Now the world is become digitalized so the
project is intended to detect the Location of fault in
digital way.

INTRODUCTION Fault in the cable can caused by

UNDERGROUND cables have been widely • Any defect,
implemented due to reliability and environmental • Inconsistency,
concerns. To improve the reliability of a distribution • Weakness or non-homogeneity that affect
system, accurate identification of a faulted segment is performance of cable .
required in order to reduce the interruption time • Current is diverted from the intended path .
during fault, i.e., to restore services by determining a • Caused by breaking of conductor& failure of
faulted segment in timely manner. In the insulation.
conventional way of detecting a fault, an exhaustive
search in larger-scale distance has been conducted.
260
This is time-consuming and inefficient. Not only that

International Journal of Advanced Research Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJARTET)
Vol. 4, Special Issue 19, April 2017
RELATED WORKS
The system uses the standard concept of derived
from Ohms law i.e., if low DC voltage is applied at
the feeder end through a series resistor assumed to be
Cable lines, then voltage or current would vary
depending upon the location of fault in the cable. In
case there is a short circuit as if Line to Ground, then
the voltage across series resistors changes
accordingly, which is then fed to an ADC to develop
precise data which the microcontroller of ARM 7
family would display in kilometers.
Underground cable construction
The system is assembled with a set of resistors
representing cable length in KM‟s and fault is
created is by a set of switches at every assumed
distant KM to cross check the accuracy of the same.
The fault occurring at an unknown distance and the
respective line (R or Y or B) is displayed on a LCD
interfaced to the microcontroller. Further it can be
improved by placing capacitor in an AC circuit so as
to measure the impedance which can even locate the
open circuited cable, similarly to that of the short
circuited fault only using resistors in DC circuit as
followed in the above proposed project
TYPES OF FAULTS
Faults has many types. Frequently occurs the faults
are given below

Short Circuit Fault

Open Circuit Fault

High voltage fault

Low voltage fault
Short Circuit Fault
A short circuit fault occurs when there is an
insulation failure between phase conductors or
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between phase conductor(s) and earth or both. An
insulation failure results into formation of a short
circuit path that triggers a short-circuit conditions in
the circuit.
Open Circuit Fault
An open-circuit fault occurs if a circuit is interrupted
by some failure. If the circuit is notclosed that is
called open circuit fault.
High voltage fault
High voltage fault occur due to the increases in the
voltage above 240 V
Low voltage fault
Low voltage fault occur due to the decreases in the
voltage below 220 V
EXISTING SYSTEM
In A-frame method, a pulsed direct current (DC) is
injected into the faulty cable and earth
terminal to locate the ground fault. The DC pulse will
flow through the conductor and return via
earth from the earth fault location back to the ground
stake as shown in Figure 1.The flow of pulsed DC
through the ground will produce a small DC voltage.
A sensitive voltmeter is used to measure the
magnitude and direction of the DC voltage in
segments of the earth along the cable route
.Analyzing the results of the measuring voltage along
the route, the location of the fault in the cable can be
pinpointed A-Frame is an accurate method but it is
not the fastest one, since the operator has to walk
along the length of the cable from the transmitter to
the ground fault. This method may face a problem if
the return DC finds some easier path back to the earth
stake of transmitter instead of returning through the
ground. If the ground is sandy, paved which provides
high resistance and consequently, less current flows
through the ground. In that case, the voltmeter fails to
measure the voltage and fault detection becomes
complicated.
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International Journal of Advanced Research Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJARTET)

Vol. 4, Special Issue 19, April 2017

Working

Normally people have been using commercial

PROPOSED SYSTEM
Underground fault detector deals with finding of
exact fault location from the base station itself.
Cables have some resistance. We are mainly focusing
that resistance. Resistance can vary with
respect to the length of the cable. If the length of the
cable is increase, the value of the resistance
will also increase. If any deviation occurs in the
resistance value, we will call that is fault point and
finding that place through ARM LPC2148
microcontoller technology. That fault point is
represents the standard of distance (kilometer) from
the base station. This value displayed by display unit.
It also sends the detailed information about the fault
to the control room using GSM and it also cut the
power supply on that particular location for the safty
of the people.
BLOCK DIAGRAM:
Power Underground
Relay
Supply unit cable circuit
voltage (230V).This voltage is step-downthrough
step down transformer. Transformer is an electrical
device that transfers electrical energy between two or
more circuits through electromagnetic induction.
Generally, transformers are used to increase or
decrease the voltages of alternating current in electric
power applications. These step down voltage goes to
rectifier unit .Rectifier is nothing but an electronic
device which used to convert an AC supply into DC
supply. This project we were using bridge
rectifier.12V AC supply is converts into 12V DC
supply. These voltage moves to the regulator unit.
Regulator is an electrical device which is used to
maintain a constant voltage. Here we were using two
voltage regulator. Namely voltage regulator 7812 and
voltage regulator 7805.7812 voltage regulator
maintains the 12V DC supply. These voltage is
enough to operate relay unit and 7805 voltage
regulator maintains the 5V DC supply .These voltage
is used to handle the ARM 7microcontroller .We
uploaded the program in the kit. . We create fault
manually. If any fault occur in the cable, immediately
will open the relay terminal and disconnect that
faulty line only. Rest of the other lines operates
normally. . The display part consists of the LCD
display interfaced to the microcontroller which shows
the status of the cable of each phase and the distance
of the cable at the particular phase, in case of any
fault .And also over voltage and under voltage
protection is monitored then rectified .All the Details
to send SMS and Data over GSM Network the
product has SIM Card holder to which activated SIM
card is inserted for normal use. To receive the SMS
and alert to the EB persons and take immediate action
lamp to drop the power fault

Hardware module
Signal
conditioner
.
ADC
LCD
ARM(LPC2148) display
microcontroller

GSM
module
Alarm
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International Journal of Advanced Research Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJARTET)

Vol. 4, Special Issue 19, April 2017

Due to their tiny size and low power consumption,

POWER SUPPLY LPC2142/2148 are ideal for applications where
The power supply circuit consists of step down miniaturization is a key requirement, such as access
transformer which is 230v step down to 12v.In control and point-of-sale. A blend of serial
this circuit 4diodes are used to form bridge rectifier communications interfaces ranging from a USB
which delivers pulsating dc voltage & then 2.0Full-speed device, multiple UARTs, SPI, SSP to
I2C-bus and on-chip SRAM of16 kB/40 kB, make
fed to capacitor filter the output voltage from rectifier
these devices very well suited for communication
is fed to filter to eliminate any a.c.
gateways andprotocol converters, soft modems, voice
components present even after rectification. The recognition and low end imaging, providing
filtered DC voltage is given to regulator to bothlarge buffer size and high processing power.
produce 12v constant DC voltage Various 32-bit timers, single or dual 10-bitADC(s),
10-bit DAC, PWM channels and 45 fast GPIO lines
with up to nine edge or level sensitive external
interrupt pins. [5] discussed about a system, GSM
based AMR has low infrastructure cost and it reduces
man power. The system is fully automatic, hence the
probability of error is reduced. The data is highly
secured and it not only solve the problem of
traditional meter reading system but also provides
additional features such as power disconnection,
reconnection and the concept of power management.
The database stores the current month and also all the
previous month data for the future use. Hence the
system saves a lot amount of time and energy.
Transformer
It is used to step down 230V to 9V AC supply and
provide isolation between power grid and circuit
Rectifier
It is used to convert AC supply into DC supply
Filter TXD0
RXD0
19
21 P0.0/TXD0/PWM1
P0.1/RXD0/PWM3/EINT0
P0.25/AD0.4/AOUT
D+
9
10
P0.25
D+
P0.2 22 11
P0.2/SCL0/CAP0.0 D- D-
It is used to reduce ripple factor of DC output P0.3
SCK0
26
27
29
P0.3/SDA0/MAT0.0/EINT1 P0.28/AD0.1/CAP0.2/MAT0.2
P0.4/SCK0/CAP0.1/AD0.6 P0.29/AD0.2/CAP0.3/MAT0.3
13
14
15
ADC
P0.29
MISO0 P0.5/MISO0/MAT0.1/AD0.7 P0.30/AD0.3/EINT3/CAP0.0 SSEL1
available from rectifier end MOSI0
SSEL0
30
31 P0.6/MOSI0/CAP0.2/AD1.0 P0.31/UP_LED/CONNECT
P0.7/SSEL0/PWM2/EINT2
17
CONNECT

Regulator
TXD1 33 46
P0.8/TXD1/PWM4/AD1.1 P0.16/EINT0/MAT0.2/CAP0.2 INT
It is used to regulate DC supply output .here regulator RXD1
SW0
34
35
37
P0.9/RXD1/PWM6/EINT3 P0.17/CAP1.2/SCK1/MAT1.2
P0.10/RTS1/CAP1.0/AD1.2P0.18/CAP1.3/MISO1/MAT1.3
47
53
54
TX0RTS
TX1RTS
SW1 P0.11/CTS1/CAP1.1/SCL1 P0.19/MAT1.2/MOSI1/CAP1.2 RX0BF
IC7805 used to provide fix 5V DC supply LED0
LED1
38
39
41
P0.12/DSR1/MAT1.0/AD1.3 P0.20/MAT1.3/SSEL1/EINT3
P0.13/DTR1/MAT1.1/AD1.4 P0.21/PWM5/AD1.6/CAP1.3
55
1
2
P0.20
P0.21
P0.14 P0.14/DCD1/EINT1/SDA1 P0.22/AD1.7/CAP0.0/MAT0.0 P0.22
45 58
ARM LPC2148 microcontroller: P0.15 P0.15/RI1/EINT2/AD1.5
U5
P0.23/VBUS VBUS

LPC 2148
LCD0 16 32 RS
12 P1.16/TRACEPKT0 P1.24/TRACECLK 28
The LPC2142/2148 microcontrollers are based on a LCD1
LCD2
LCD3
8
4
P1.17/TRACEPKT1
P1.18/TRACEPKT2
P1.19/TRACEPKT3
P1.25/EXTIN0
P1.26/RTCK
P1.27/TD0
24
64
DIOW
LCD_EN
P1.27
48 60
32/16-bit ARM7TDMI-S CPU with LCD4
LCD5
LCD6
44
40
P1.20/TRACESYNC
P1.21/PIPESTAT0
P1.22/PIPESTAT1
P1.28/TDI
P1.29/TCK
P1.30/TMS
56
52
P1.28
P1.29
P1.30
LCD7 36 20 P1.31
P1.23/PIPESTAT2 P1.31/TRST-
real-time emulation and embedded trace support, that
combines the microcontroller with 64 kB and 512 kB 6
18
25
VSS
VSS
23
VDD 43
VDD 51
VSS VDD 7
of embedded high-speed flash memory. A 128-bit 42
50
59
VSS
VSS
VDDA +3.3V
C16 VSSA
wide memory interface and unique accelerator 22PF 3
5 RTXC1 XTAL2
62
XTAL1 61 XTALIN
MCLK
RTXC2
architecture enable 32-bit code execution at the Y1
3
57
49
VBAT 63 +3.3V
C15 RESET- RESET- VREF
maximum clock rate. For critical code size 22PF
32.748KHz

applications, the alternative 16-bit Thumb mode

reduces code by more than 30% with minimal make these microcontrollers particularly suitable
performance penalty. forindustrial control and medical systems

International Journal of Advanced Research Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJARTET)
Vol. 4, Special Issue 19, April 2017
RECTIFIER
The output from the transformer is fed to the rectifier.
It converts A.C. into pulsating D.C. The rectifier may
be a half wave or a full wave rectifier. In this project,
a bridge rectifier is used because of its merits like
good stability .The circuit has four diodes connected
to form a bridge. A rectifier is an electrical device
that converts alternating current (AC), which
periodically reverses direction, to direct current (DC),
which flows in only one direction. The process is
known as rectification.
Rectifiers have many uses, but are often found
serving as components of DC supplies and high-
voltage direct current power transmission systems.
Rectification may serve in roles other than to
generate direct current for use as a source of power
LCD:
Liquid crystal display are interfacing to
microcontroller .Most commonly LCD used are 16*2
&20*4 display. In display means 20 represents
column & 4 represents rows.
LCDs are available to display arbitrary images (as in
a general-purpose computer display) or fixed images
with low information content, which can be displayed
or hidden, such as preset words, digits, and 7-
segment displays as in a digital clock. They use the
same basic technology, except that arbitrary images
are made up of a large number of small pixels, while
other displays have larger elements
. VOLTAGE REGULATOR
A voltage regulator is an electrical regulator designed
to automatically maintain a constant voltage level. In
this project, power supply of 5V and 12V are
required. In order to obtain these voltage levels, 7805
and 7812 voltage regulators are to be used. The first
number 78 represents positive supply and the
numbers 05, 12 represent the required output voltage
levels. The L78xx series of three-terminal positive
regulators is available.
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Electronic voltage regulators are found in devices
such as computer power supplies where they stabilize
the DC voltages used by the processor and other
elements. In automobile alternators and central power
station generator plants, voltage regulators control the
output of the plant. In an electric system, voltage
regulators may be installed at a substation or along
distribution lines so that all customers receive steady
voltage independent of how much power is drawn
from the line
RELAY
Relay is sensing device which senses the fault & send
a trip signal to circuit breaker to isolate the faulty
section. A relay is automatic device by means of
which an electrical circuit is indirectly controlled &
is governed by change in the same or another
electrical circuit. There are various types of relay:
Numerical relay, Static relay & electromagnetic
relay. Relay are housed in panel in the control room.
GSM MODULE
A GSM modem is a wireless modem that works with
a GSM wireless network .The GSM modem is
slightly different from the conventional modem. This
utilizes the GSM standard for cellular technology.
Here, one end being a wired connection ,receives and
transmits data. The other end is connected to a RF
antenna.The GSM modem acts like a cellular phone
and transmits text and voice data.it communicate
GSM through SIM.
ADVANTAGE
1. Less maintenance
2. It has higher efficiency
3. Less fault occur in underground cable
4. Underground cable fault location model are
applicable to all types of cable ranging from 1kv to
500kv&other types of cable fault such as-Short
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International Journal of Advanced Research Trends in Engineering and Technology (IJARTET)

Vol. 4, Special Issue 19, April 2017

circuit fault, cable cuts, Resistive fault, Sheath faults,
Water trees, Partial discharges
CONCLUSION
In this work the short circuit fault , low voltage fault
,high voltage fault at a particular distance in the
Underground Cables can be detected using Ohm’s
Law which enables to rectify fault efficiently. This
system can be beneficial to the underground cables
fault finding as it is cost effective and can be
accessed remotely. This system will help to
implement the system to regulate the industrial use of
underground cables and avoid power losses. GSM
method is use to convey the information of fault from
the Base station to the control room.It gives the new
dimensions in the field of underground cables fault
finding with minimum cost and less time.

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