A New Approach to Detect Power Quality Disturbances in Smart Cities Using Scaling-Based Chirplet Transform with Strategically Placed Smart Meters

The growth of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices has increased the amount of data created by the distribution network’s periphery nodes, requiring more data transfer capacity. Recent applications’ real-time requirements have strained standard computing paradigms, and data processing has struggled to keep up. Edge computing is employed in this research to detect distribution network faults, allowing for instant sensing and real-time reaction to the control room for faster investigation of distribution problems and power outages, making the system more reliable. Moreover, to overcome the challenges of fault detection, advanced signal processing methods need to be integrated with the Adaboost classifier. An Adaboost-based edge device, suitable for installation on top of a power pole, is proposed in this research as a means of real-time fault detection. To increase throughput, decrease latency and offload network traffic, data collecting, feature extraction and Adaboost-based problem identification are all performed in an integrated edge node. Enhanced detection accuracy (98.67%) and decreased latency (115.2 ms) verify the effectiveness of the suggested approach. In this research, we enhance the classical chirplets transform to create the scaling-basis chirplet transform (SBCT) for time–frequency (TF) analysis. This approach modulates the TF basis around the relevant time function to modify the chirp rate with frequency and time. By carefully selecting the sampling frequency, it is possible to discriminate between short circuit fault and high-impedance fault (HIF) by calculating spectral entropy. The TF representation obtained with the SBCT provides considerably higher energy concentrations, even for signals with numerous components, closely spaced frequencies and heavy background noise.