An overview of the selection process for contactless electrical sensors used in overhead transmission lines’ monitoring

This paper serves as a quick guide for the selection process of contactless electrical sensors involved in unmanned aerial systemsbased gridmonitoring applications. Since the selection criteria for such sensors can be enormous and hence challenging, the major key points were elaborated after a thorough review of relevant work. The review presented in this paper, composedof seven current sensors and three voltage sensors topologies, is critically investigated. In terms of flexibility, complexity, sensitivity, and other performance indices, it is concluded that an “all-optical” dual voltage and current contactless sensor would represent an optimum choice to be employed within remote measuring applications. The mainrecommended feature of the suggested sensor is its ability to freely measure electrical quantities while being “relatively” far from the electrical transmission line, implying no need to be “clamped” all around it. By presenting an informative background for intelligent field sensing applications, this paper also suggests the future work relevant to the studied topic.