Time Reversal Applied to Multi-Carrier Reflectometry for On-line Diagnosis in Complex Wiring Systems

In wiring networks, on-line diagnosis aims at detecting and locating faults in live cables concurrently to their normal operation. Within this context, Multi-carrier Reftectometry (MCR), a reftectometry based method, not only succeeded in this mission but also permitted controlling the signal bandwidth and thus avoiding false alarms. However, it has shown to suffer from signal loss related to wiring system's attenuation, coupling and network-topology complexity. On the other hand, Time Reversal (TR) signal processing recently adapted with efficiency to wire diagnosis, has proven to boost the performance with an increased network response's complexity accompanied with a higher detection gain. In this paper, we propose a fusion between TR and MCR in a TR Multi-Carrier Reflectometry (TRMCR) method aiming at maximizing the coverage of the online diagnosis. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that TRMCR permits to increase the peak's signature at detected impedance discontinuities in a network under test (NUT) when compared to what the standard MCR produce.