Sensitivity Enhancement of Weak Reflection Signals in Reflectometry via Concurrent Pulse Superposition

With the continuous expansion of modern electrical infrastructure, the scale and deployment of electrical cable networks have rapidly increased, underscoring the critical importance of systematic cable system maintenance. Among various diagnostic technologies, reflectometry has emerged as a highly effective and prominent methodology for precise fault detection and localization. Although the operational reliability of these networks fundamentally relies on precise fault detection, identifying minor or early-stage degradation remains a formidable challenge due to the marginal magnitude of the weak reflected signals. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a concurrent pulse superposition (CPS) method to enhance the detection sensitivity of weak reflection signatures in reflectometry without requiring expensive hardware modifications. The proposed method was evaluated through simulations covering fault resistances from 50Ω to 1000Ω and SNR levels from 15dB to 35dB. Across these conditions, CPS increased the reflection peak magnitude by approximately 2.5–3.5 times and maintained identifiable peaks in all tested cases, whereas the conventional method failed under several combinations of high fault resistance and low SNR. Consequently, this approach is expected to significantly empower the diagnostic analysis of extremely weak, early-stage faults, offering a practical solution for predictive maintenance in electrical systems.