Design and Application of a Circular Printed Monopole Antenna in Partial Discharge Detection

Abstract

In this paper, the design and application of a circular microstrip antenna for partial discharge detection is presented. For this purpose, the truncated ground plane technique was applied for the bandwidth enhancement. In addition, aiming at an optimized structure, the computational simulations with several combinations of the antenna dimensional parameters were performed. In order to verify whether the developed antenna met the prerequisites (bandwidth and gain) for practical application in partial discharge detection, the optimized antenna was subjected to tests in an anechoic chamber. Finally, the antenna sensitivity was compared with the IEC 60270 standard method. For this purpose, the simultaneous tests were carried out in a partial discharge generator arrangement composed of an oil cell with point-to-plane and plane-to-plane electrode configurations. The developed antenna can detect apparent charge values higher than 30 pC and has an average gain greater than 2 dB along its bandwidth. The obtained results attested to the potential of the developed antenna for the development of UHF sensors for partial discharge detection in high-voltage equipment.