2016 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 25–27 November 2016, Penang, Malaysia
Single-Ended Fault Location for Transmission Lines
using Traveling Wave and Multilayer Perceptron
Network
Mimi Nurzilah Hashim, Muhammad Khusairi Osman, Mohammad Nizam Ibrahim, Ahmad Farid Abidin, Mat Nizam Mahmud
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)
Penang, Malaysia
miminurzilah@gmail.com
Abstract- Transmission lines are subjected to many kind of fault.
Therefore fault location scheme is needed to determine the exact
location of fault. This paper proposed a method for estimating
transmission line fault location system using traveling wave
method and artificial neural network (ANN). The method starts
by decomposing the current signal from the faulted phase using
DWT technique. Then, time fault measurement is extracted
from the decomposed signal. Finally, a type of ANN called
multilayer perceptron network (MLP) is used to locate the fault
location. The proposed method is benchmark against the
existing method and evaluated by using 5 measurement indexes;
Coefficient of Determination (R2) as well as four error measures-
Percentage Prediction Error (PPE), Mean Square Error (MSE),
Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute
Percentage Error (MAPE). The results shows that integration of
traveling wave and ANN absolutely could improve the
performance especially for fault occurs in short distance.
Keywords: Transmission Lines, Fault location, Traveling wave
technique, Discrete Wavelet Transform, Artificial Neural
Network
I. INTRODUCTION
Transmission lines are definitely exposed to the
environment and thus make it facing highest failure among the
others power system component. Finding fault location is
crucially need for maintaining the reliability of power system
during fault occurs besides the detection and classification
scheme. Fault location become a solution to restore the power
in speed recovery. Among the benefits of fault location
scheme are[1][2]:
i. Saving time and effort to fix the resultant damage.
ii. Improving the system availability by fast response and
effective maintenance processes.
iii. Assisting future maintenance plans as preventive
scheduled to avoid large problem.
iv. Economic factors by cost reduction.
978-1-5090-1178-0/16 /$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
Fault location scheme should determine an accurate fault
distance for repairing purposes. The traveling wave is the best
method to calculate fault location in transmission lines.
However it have an issues for mathematical technique to
locate fault occur at short distance where it has high
percentage of prediction error. Currently, most of researchers
has combined the method using ANN to improve the existing
performance but the scheme proposed were using common
features either samples of fault current signal or DWT signal.
This paper aims to present a method for single-ended
fault location system in transmission lines using integration of
traveling wave and ANN technique. Then the performance of
proposed method would be compare with mathematical
method.
This paper are limited to single-ended method of fault
location technique for 10 types of fault. The 297 experimental
data was generated using MATLAB SIMULINK for data
training, validation and testing for ANN. All the data have
been developed under MATLAB environment. The length of
transmission line is 500km with voltage of 500KV, 50Hz. By
determining the accurate fault location could have quick
response for necessary repair that definitely could improve the
reliability, service restoration, reduce outage time, operating
cost and customer satisfaction.
In general, identifying fault location in transmission lines
can be divided into two categories, traveling wave and
impedance based technique as shown in Figure 1. Traveling
wave technique is reflected wave measurement while
impedance based technique is current and voltage
measurement during fault [3]–[5].
Fault Location Method
Traveling Wave Impedance Based
Type Type Type Type Type Single Double
A B C D E End End
Figure 1: Classification of Fault Location Method
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 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 25–27 November 2016, Penang, Malaysia
The selection of fault location method will determine the
performance of fault location scheme. The performance of
impedance based technique and traveling wave technique for
fault location was proposed by Jannalagadda and Hagos[6].
The authors claimed the simulation of ten types of fault
correctly locates with accuracy of less than 0.5% for traveling
wave and less than 2% for impedance based. Many
researchers more interested on traveling wave technique due
to ability to have better accuracy. Baseer[1]explored the
traveling wave technique to locate fault in transmission line
and claimed the application of traveling wave is more suitable
for long transmission lines. Schweitzer et al. and Marx et al.
also have been investigated the traveling wave technology for
protective relay [4][7], Zhu et al. conducted fault location
scheme using traveling waves for multi-terminal transmission
lines [5].
Nowadays, combination of ANN and fault location
method had been highlighted by many researchers. ANN
technique required a processing tool to obtain features before
estimate the location. DWT is signal processing tool to
analyze the non-stationary transient signal. So far this
technique has been used to analyze many kinds of transient
signals in power system studies especially for fault location
scheme. According to wavelet transform theory, transient
signal can be decomposed into a series of wavelet. Jamil et al.
explored the DWT for fault location estimation in
transmission lines by using Daubechies4 (dB4) as a series
wavelet[8]. The best mother wavelet for fault location scheme
is Daubechies family and dB4 become the common chosen for
many researchers for fault location estimation. Baseer
claimed that traveling wave signal is the best suited with
DWT because it have multiple resolution in time and
frequency domain[1] while Gupta and Mahanty claimed by
using DWT make the fault location scheme simplicity [9].
The authors in [10] identified the ability of wavelet to
decompose signal into frequency bands in both time and
frequency make the wavelet family most suitable in prediction
fault location in transmission line.
Suitable features selection plays an important role as
input to ANN and resulting the performance of system
develop. Raoofat et al. and Kale et al. using signal
characteristics as features[11][12] while Jamil et al. proposed
standard deviation of current signal as the chosen features[13].
Many researcher using the common features but there have no
research using the parameter of traveling wave itself.
II. METHODOLOGY
This paper conducted 10 types of fault which are three
types of single line to ground fault, three types of double line
fault, three types of double line to ground fault and lastly a
three phase fault. The fault location scheme were used fault
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current signal as reference to analyze. Overall of the research
works follows the sequential in Figure 2.
Start
Design Transmission Line Model
Simulation of fault
Data Collection
Signal Processing using DWT
Features Extraction
Training ANN to Perform Fault Location
Testing ANN to Perform Fault Location
Performance evaluation
End
Figure 2: Flow of Research Works
Various technique could be implement using traveling
wave technique. However, this paper choosing the traveling
wave method based on the arrival time of fault signal at the
single-end of line measured. The transmission line model
considered for this paper has been shown in figure 3. The
model was developed using MATLAB/SIMULINK to run
fault simulation for data generation.
G1 Length of the Line, L
G2
L1 L2
Relay
Fault
Figure 3: Single Transmission Line Model
The fault is created at 0.002s with sampling frequency of 1.25
MHz and the parameter setting for:
R1 = 0.01273 Ω/km; R0 = 0.3864 Ω/km;
L1 = 0.9337e-3 H/km; L0 = 4.1264e-3 H/km;
C1 = 12.74e-9 F/km; C0 = 7.751e-9 F/km
The mathematical equation of traveling wave technique for
single-ended method as in equation (2).
, (1)
√
, (2)
Where,
V is the velocity of propagation, L is the inductance value, C
is the capacitance value, td is the difference in time, t1 is time
of fault occurs, t2 is time of fault appears.
 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 25–27 November 2016, Penang, Malaysia
ANN development have several process before estimate
the location as in Figure 4. The current fault signal is used
because of the sensitivity to any changes to the system. DWT
as signal processing was applied to fault signal for features
extraction and thus act as input for training, validation and
testing of ANN.
Fault Signal Features Location
ANN
Signal Processing Extraction of Fault
Figure 4: Main Process towards ANN
Firstly, the DWT decomposed into details and
approximations as in equation 3 that have lower frequency
parts are called approximation of the signal and lower scales
are called signal details.
ψ , 2 ψ 2
Where, j and k are scale and translation parameters,
respectively. Parameter j changes the amount of signal
compression and k displaces the wavelet in time domain.
In this paper, dB4 from Daubechies family was chosen as
series wavelet since most of researchers claimed that dB4 is
the best for fault location scheme. The sample point of first
peak change in DWT signal is extracted. Then the sample
point is convert to time as features to ANN.
A structure of MLP as in Figure 5 consists of three layer
which are input layer, hidden layer and output layer. The
MLP network was selected because the model display an
efficient learning environment where each layer is connected
with weight and bias for minimizing error between target and
obtained value. The process of training, validation and testing
are performed using neural network toolboxes in MATLAB
with suitable number of hidden layer. Lavenberg-Marquardt
backpropagation is used as training algorithm. The transfer
function of the hidden layer and output layer are respectively
sigmoid and linear function. The number of hidden layer are
important due to it will influence the performance of system
develop.
Output Layer
Hidden Layer
Input Layer
Figure 5: Structure of MLP network
The performance of system are evaluated by calculating
performance indicator. Performance indicator chosen are R2,
PPE, MSE, RMSE and MAPE.
R2 is an indication the relationship between the outputs
and targets. The linear regression model shows the fitness of
data from output and target by checking the goodness-of-fit
via the coefficient of determination, R2. If the predictions are
close to the actual values, R2 would to be close to 1. On the
other hand, if the predictions are unrelated to the actual
values, then R2 would be close to 0. In all cases, R2 lies
between 0 and 1
The Percentage Prediction Error, PPE is indication of
ability the network to locate fault. Less error indicate the high
performance system.
100 (4)
(3)
The Mean Square Error, MSE is an indicator for the
quality of the estimated data from targeted output. Best
results of MSE is 0.
∑ (5)
Where,
n=Number of data
The Root Mean Square Error, RMSE provides
information on short term performance which is measure the
variation of predicted values around the measured data. The
lower the RMSE, the more accurate estimation.
∑ (6)
Where,
n=Number of data
The Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) as an index
for efficiency determination of the back-propagation neural
networks is computed in Equation 4[14].
∑ 100% (7)
Where,
n= Number of data
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. TRANSMISSION LINE MODEL
Figure 6 shows the single line diagram of
transmission line model using MATLAB/SIMULINK.
This model were designed for 10 types of fault
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 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 25–27 November 2016, Penang, Malaysia

simulation. Each types of fault was generated 99 data of

fault simulation to decompose into DWT.

Figure 6: Transmission Line model using MATLAB/SIMULINK

Since the results for all types were the same, From the DWT, time was extracted as features into
therefore only 297 data was selected to be used for all ANN. The first level details of DWT were used. For an
types of fault. The DWT was applied to the current example as in Figure 7, the first peak appear during fault
waveform as in Figure 7 that shows the results of fault is at 0.0026856s. The first peak is the reflected fault
simulation and signal processing of DWT for AG fault at signal have been detected at point measure.
200km.
B. HIDDEN NODE SELECTION

Three layer MLP network using time as input into

ANN and the number of hidden layer determined by
choosing the lowest MSE value as in Table 1.

Table 1: Number of Hidden Node and MSE value

NO. HIDDEN NODES MSE
7 0.3614
8 0.3557
9 0.4323
10 0.3699
11 0.4022
12 0.2418
13 0.3234
14 0.2866

Based on the results, 12 hidden nodes is the best

Figure 7: Fault Simulation and Signal Processing using DWT at 200km fault chosen due to lowest MSE value compared to the others
hidden nodes. The performance of 12 hidden nodes of

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 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 25–27 November 2016, Penang, Malaysia

ANN are shown in Figure 8 which is performance for 47 45.6876 46.5993

training, validation and testing were analyzed.
The performance could be seen clearly in Figure 9
where it shows the PPE for mathematical and ANN
method. From the graph, the lower PPE of ANN indicate
the accurate estimation had been made as well as succeed
developed better fault location scheme.

Graph of Percentage Prediction Error (PPE)

70
60
50

Percentage
40
30
20
10
0

27
52
77
2

102
127
152
177
202
227
252
277
302
327
352
377
402
427
452
477
Figure 8: R2 for 12 hidden node Distance
Mathematical ANN
The figure shows the R2 for each process have good
results which is more than 0.9. From the results, the
system developed produces good relationship between Figure 9: Graph of percentage prediction Error for 500km of
Transmission Lines
estimation and actual distance. Therefore, it proven that
the best architecture of ANN for this study is 1 input, 12
Traveling wave method have good performance for
hidden nodes and 1 output.
long line transmission line for both method but
mathematical method facing the problem to estimate
C. PERFORMANCE OF FAULT LOCATION USING
accurately for short distance fault due to high PPE shown
ANN AND MATHEMATICAL METHOD
in Figure 9. However, ANN estimation give an
improvement to the fault location scheme as the PPE is
ANN has good estimation compared to the
less than 2.5% for short distance fault. Therefore, ANN
mathematical technique where it has better estimation for
are able to locate all fault occurs on transmission line
all fault distance. Table 2 shows the results of estimation
compared to the mathematical method.
fault location on transmission lines using ANN and
Table 3 shows the evaluation error between ANN
mathematical method. Weakness of mathematical
and mathematical methods. It can be seen that ANN have
method of traveling wave is to handle short distance fault.
a lower error for each error evaluation that is MSE,
However, results in Table 2 proven that ANN solved the
RMSE and MAPE. Error evaluation for ANN is less than
problem to locate fault at short distance. From the table,
0.5 compared to mathematical method have less than 2.
ANN estimated better than mathematical method along
So, ANN is the best estimation since it has lower error
the 47 km from point measure.
evaluation.
Table 2: Estimation of fault distance between Mathematical and ANN
Table 3: Error Evaluation of ANN and Mathematical
Actual (km) Mathematical (km) ANN (km)
Error Evaluation ANN Mathematical
2 0.6957 2.0059
MSE 0.2418 1.9915
7 5.7979 6.8230 RMSE 0.4917 1.4112
12 10.9001 11.9012 MAPE (%) 0.1773 1.7636
17 16.0022 17.1825
22 20.6406 21.8696 IV. CONCLUSION
27 25.7427 26.8625
32 30.8449 31.7856 High performance ANN based fault location scheme in
37 35.9471 36.7680 transmission line had been proposed. The results
42 41.5131 42.3420

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 2016 6th IEEE International Conference on Control System, Computing and Engineering, 25–27 November 2016, Penang, Malaysia

demonstrated the ability of ANN to learn the pattern and on Single-circuit transmission line,” Electr. Eng., pp. 1613–1618,
2009.
estimate the fault location accurately. By using time change
from fault current signal as a features into ANN was the best
selection. The chosen method of traveling wave technique
and ANN by measuring reflected fault signal at one-ended
point developed better fault location scheme compared to
traditional way. ANN have PPE less than 2.5% instead of
65% for mathematical methods. Other error evaluation
parameter also indicate low error result. The best ANN
architecture for this study is using one input twelve hidden
nodes and one output.

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