A Hybrid Deep Learning Approach for Bearing Fault Diagnosis Using Continuous Wavelet Transform and Attention-Enhanced Spatiotemporal Feature Extraction

Abstract

This study presents a hybrid deep learning approach for bearing fault diagnosis that integrates continuous wavelet transform (CWT) with an attention-enhanced spatiotemporal feature extraction framework. The model combines time-frequency domain analysis using CWT with a classification architecture comprising multi-head self-attention (MHSA), bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM), and a 1D convolutional residual network (1D conv ResNet). This architecture effectively captures both spatial and temporal dependencies, enhances noise resilience, and extracts discriminative features from nonstationary and nonlinear vibration signals. The model is initially trained on a controlled laboratory bearing dataset and further validated on real and artificial subsets of the Paderborn bearing dataset, demonstrating strong generalization across diverse fault conditions. t-SNE visualizations confirm clear separability between fault categories, supporting the model's capability for precise and reliable feature learning and strong potential for real-time predictive maintenance in complex industrial environments.