An arc fault is an unintentional power discharge which may cause unexpected serious consequences such as fires. Under different voltage, current and loading conditions, along with unplanned locations, the occurrence times of arc faults are always random. Due to the randomness characteristic of arc fault, the measurement of the position and intensity of arc faults in real- time is a challenge to researchers. This brief proposes an analog- digital mixed-signal system applied to the arc fault detection in smart meters. The introduced digital system can automatically identify the load types and the filters of the reconfigurable analog circuit arranged according to the loads. The proposed digital system also implements the arc faults detecting threshold and its respective methods. A field-programmable analog array (FPAA) incorporates the involved analog functions, and an Altera Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) realizes the digital system. We test the performance of the proposed mixed-signal system under different load conditions with daily household appliances. The results show that the circuit is able to detect 99.6% of the arc faults during the experiment. The proposed mixed system provides a cost-effective package solution for accurately detecting the arc fault in modern smart meters.

中文翻译：

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用于智能电表的基于 FPGA 的自重构电弧故障检测系统

电弧故障是一种无意的功率放电，可能会导致意外的严重后果，例如火灾。在不同的电压、电流和负载条件下，以及非计划的位置，电弧故障的发生时间总是随机的。由于电弧故障的随机性特点，实时测量电弧故障的位置和强度是研究人员面临的挑战。本简报提出了一种模拟数字混合信号系统，应用于智能电表中的电弧故障检测。引入的数字系统可以自动识别负载类型和根据负载排列的可重构模拟电路的滤波器。所提出的数字系统还实现了电弧故障检测阈值及其各自的方法。现场可编程模拟阵列 (FPAA) 包含所涉及的模拟功能，Altera 现场可编程门阵列 (FPGA) 实现数字系统。我们用日常家用电器测试了所提出的混合信号系统在不同负载条件下的性能。结果表明，该电路在实验过程中能够检测到99.6%的电弧故障。所提出的混合系统为准确检测现代智能电表中的电弧故障提供了一种具有成本效益的封装解决方案。