Application and processing of Time Domain Reflectometry: a model-based approach

In this thesis a full featured workflow for the implementation of integrated diagnosis and monitoring systems based on Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) is proposed. First it is shown how TDR probes installed in TDR-based setups can be adopted with simpler and cheaper techniques, then newly developed DSP algorithms for direct reflectogram analysis are presented. Afterwards, the TDR inverse problem, i.e. estimating the profiles of Transmission Line parameters from reflectograms, is dealt with. LineLab, a custom, reflectometry oriented frequency and time domain Transmission Line simulator is presented as simulation tool, and the jDE optimization algorithm is applied to successfully solve the inverse problem in both synthetic and real life scenarios. Both synthetic and experimental results are illustrated. The proposed techniques are of immediate practical application in a number of fields, such as leakage detection, concrete structures monitoring, precision agriculture, cable soft-fault detection, etc. Besides, they pave the way towards the realization of an integrated low-cost TDR instrument capable of continuous monitoring with both on-device and in the cloud processing and profile reconstruction features.