An Adaptive Decision Logic to Enhance Distance Protection of Transmission Lines

This paper introduces adaptive decision-making logic to improve the performance of distance protection of transmission lines. The proposed approach incorporates the trajectory of the measured impedance into the relay final decision-making logic through a weighting procedure. Two criteria are used to weigh the impedance plane appropriately, where higher weights are assigned to the faults occurring at the interior areas of the relay protective zone and low resistance faults. The weights assigned to impedance samples are added together considering the amount of smoothness of the measured impedance trajectory. An adaptive neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is used to implement the proposed decision logic. Meanwhile, the fault current amplitude is considered as the other input of the ANFIS network to accelerate the relay operation for close-in faults and to incorporate an index for the source-to-line impedance ratio into the final decision-making logic. Extensive simulation studies using PSCAD/EMTDC software indicate that the proposed approach provides a very reliable technique to make the distance protective scheme faster and smarter. It helps to achieve the optimal compromise between the protective relay operation time and security.