Intelligent Wireless System to Monitoring Mechanical Fault in Power Transmission Lines

This paper presents the development of an intelligent wireless system to monitoring mechanical fault in electric power transmission lines under oscillating movement, collapse, overheating or short circuit faults in the cable; caused by natural or induced man effects. The system has a remote module hanging on a cable and a central operation module communicated via wireless. The remote module has data acquisition, is capable to add the location where is going to be installed with a GPS receiver (Global Position System), is capable to sensing temperature, electric current and acceleration of the cable; the last one is an integrate circuit based in MEMS technology (Micro Electromechanical System), all of these operations are controlled and processed with a microcontroller. The central operation module is connected to serial port in a personal computer. The user can survey the remote module, ask the historic stored data, assign an identification number and assign global positioning coordinates via wireless, with the system-user software created in LabVIEW.