Wind turbine blade deflection sensing system based on UWB technology

A microwave sensing system for estimating deflection of a wind turbine blade is presented. The system measures distances at mo ultrawideband (UWB) wireless links between one antenna at the tip and two antennas at the root of the blade, which allows for determination of the tip position by triangulation. An experimental setup with corner reflector antenna mounted at the tip and horn antennas at the root of a 37.3 m long blade is described. Analyzing the data from the experiment, special attention is given to the propagation aspects of the VWB links, with focus on the multipath effects caused by the blade. It is demonstrated that despite the adverse effects of the multipath propagation the ranging accuracy of the system amounts to 1.5 cm, leading to maximum error of deflection 4.5 %.