Graph-Based Framework with Waveform-Informed Connectivity for Multi-Label Partial Discharge Source-Type Classification

Partial discharge (PD) source-type classification is essential for condition-based maintenance of high-voltage apparatus. Existing approaches based on grid discretizations of phase-resolved partial discharge (PRPD) patterns suffer from performance degradation under stochastic interference and multi-source conditions. This paper proposes a graph-based framework that integrates the morphological characterization of raw high-frequency PD waveforms with the phase-amplitude position of individual discharge events to enable multi-label classification, identifying multiple PD sources coexisting within a single test. The framework operates through three stages: a multi-task neural network extracts per-pulse embeddings and confidence scores; a construction procedure establishes selective graph connectivity based on spatial proximity and morphological similarity; and an edge-conditioned graph neural network performs classification via message passing weighted by multimodal edge attributes. Experimental evaluation on PD measurements acquired in accordance with IEC 60270 shows that the proposed framework achieves a Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.98 and an exact match ratio of 0.97 across single-source, noisy, and multi-source conditions, substantially outperforming histogram- and set-based baselines. The framework maintains an MCC of 0.97 in multi-source scenarios, where its advantage over existing methods is most pronounced. Cross-domain evaluation on an independent dataset acquired with different laboratory equipment confirms the approach’s robustness, achieving an MCC of 0.93 without retraining. Finally, an ablation study demonstrates that the joint removal of morphological similarity filtering and confidence-based node filtering and edge gating reduces the MCC by 0.25, confirming the critical role of the waveform-informed relational structure.