Smart connectors fusion for incipient defect diagnosis on aging aircraft wiring systems
Abstract
This paper introduces the first embedded Smart Connector (SmartCo) able to detect and locate incipient defect caused by various origins such as chafing, bending radius, pinching, cable movement, etc., and this even in complex wiring networks. Based on Orthogonal Multi-tone Time Domain Reflec-tometry (OMTDR) technology, the SmartCo uses the test signal not only to generate the reflectometry signal, but also to transmit useful information. To the best of our knowledge the simultaneous combination of communication and cable assessment has never been done with reflectometry-based systems. Our approach permits to aggregate data from a set of slave connectors. These smart connectors are set at strategic points in the network and send their information to the master. Indeed, since incipient defect is hard to distinguish from noise, the master performs an advanced post-processing to eliminate false alarms. A demonstrator has been developed where wire diagnosis and data communication are embedded into a board card.