# A New Method for Inverter Diagnosis of Electric Locomotive Using Adversarial Neural Networks

Authors: Yingchun Shi; Chunyang Chen; Yu Luo
Journal: Security and Communication Networks
 (2022)

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## Abstract

In order to improve the fault diagnosis accuracy of the electric locomotive inverter, this article combines the adversarial neural network to construct the electric locomotive inverter diagnosis system. Moreover, at the data level, this article compares and analyzes three methods of data expansion based on single-sample processing, data expansion based on image front and background separation, and data expansion based on an adversarial neural network. In addition, this article adopts a new feature extractor and increases the penalty cost of small samples being misclassified. Finally, this article uses the LBP operator to extract the image texture features to distinguish and detect the different shapes of the rotor windings and build an intelligent system to verify the effect of the proposed system model. The experimental research shows that the inverter diagnosis system for electric locomotives based on the proposed adversarial neural network has a good practical effect.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

As the rear stage of the electric traction converter, the electric traction inverter converts the DC signal into an AC signal with a controllable frequency and amplitude so as to realize the speed control of the traction motor. The traction inverter consists of several IGBT modules with integrated diodes. Due to the high reliability and stability of the diode and the less electrical and thermal stress it bears, the faults of the traction inverter are mainly IGBT faults. The IGBT fault can be divided into IGBT open-circuit fault, IGBT short-circuit fault, and IGBT gate signal intermittent loss fault. IGBT short-circuit faults often generate extremely large currents in a very short period of time, causing serious damage to the system. Therefore, it is difficult to diagnose IGBT short-circuit faults online. Some auxiliary protection circuits are often used to prevent the occurrence of IGBT short-circuit faults or series fast fuses can convert short-circuit faults into open-circuit faults. The intermittent loss of IGBT gate signal is mainly caused by factors such as poor contact between the drive circuit and the control circuit, line aging, and electromagnetic interference. It is relatively difficult to diagnose online, and it can be regarded as an open-circuit fault and subsequent offline diagnosis can be performed. Therefore, this article mainly studies the IGBT open-circuit fault of electric traction inverter.The high-speed train can run on the railway mainly by the drive of the electric motor, and the electric motor that drives the train forward is called the traction motor. The traction motor system of a high-speed train consists of multiple power configuration units, each of which includes electrical equipment such as transformers, rectifiers, and inverters, as well as mechanical equipment such as traction motors, gear boxes, and driving wheels. In the CRH type EMU, the energy of the train comes from the alternating current in the overhead catenary. It first uses the pantograph to receive the current, then transmits it to the main transformer through the line to reduce the voltage, and then rectifies and inverts through the converter to provide energy for the traction motor. The wheels are driven by gear transmission to make the train move forward at high speed. At present, China already has the world’s largest high-speed railway network, with high-speed trains galloping along the railways from the icy and cold alpine regions to the hot and rainy tropical regions. Therefore, the train needs to be able to run stably in harsh environments such as severe cold, high temperature, sand, and dust. In such a complex operating environment, the traction motor system of high-speed trains has undergone various tests, and some failures will inevitably occur. Common traction motor system faults include traction motor interturn short circuit, broken rotor bars, stator voltage and current sensor faults, speed sensor faults, converter IGBT component faults, and sensor faults. The research on fault detection and diagnosis for these common faults can not only ensure the good working condition of the train but also avoid serious losses caused by faults during operation, which is of great significance to ensure the safe and stable operation of high-speed trains.In this article, an adversarial neural network is used to construct an inverter diagnosis system for electric locomotives, so as to improve the real-time performance of inverter diagnosis of electric locomotives.


## 2. Related Work

In order to ensure the normal operation of the inverter, it is necessary to carry out real-time monitoring and online diagnosis [1]. In the inverter fault, the short circuit and open circuit of the power device are the most frequent faults of the inverter. A short-circuit fault will generate a large short-circuit current instantaneously. Usually, the diagnosis of a short-circuit fault is mainly realized through hardware circuits, or a fast fuse is connected to the bridge arm to convert the short-circuit fault of the power tube into an open-circuit fault, and the open-circuit fault diagnosis method is used [2]. When an open-circuit fault occurs in the power tube of the inverter, the system can still operate under abnormal conditions, but it will lead to distortion of the output waveform and unbalanced voltage on the DC side. Therefore, the existing research on inverter fault diagnosis mainly focuses on the open-circuit fault diagnosis research [3]. Inverter fault diagnosis methods can be divided into current-based diagnosis methods and voltage-based diagnosis methods according to different detection quantities. Literature [4] takes the inverter three-phase current signal as the characteristic parameter, first uses wavelet analysis to denoise the signal, then obtains the fault feature vector through Fourier transform to statistics the current signal, and constructs a neural network model to realize fault diagnosis. Literature [5] discusses the current vector trajectory slope method and the current vector instantaneous frequency method. The former judges the fault location by the slope of the current vector trajectory, and the latter judges whether the fault occurs or not by setting the literature threshold according to the instantaneous frequency of the current vector under the fault condition is 0 but cannot locate the fault. Literature [6] can diagnose single-phase open-circuit faults and single-pipe open-circuit faults according to the obtained spectrum components by performing a double Fourier transform on the DC side bus current. While the current-based approach simply measures the load current without adding additional sensors, it is susceptible to load effects. Literature [7] configures a large number of voltage sensors in the circuit, compares the inverter phase voltage, motor phase voltage, motor line voltage, or motor neutral point voltage with the normal state, and diagnoses open-circuit fault devices according to the voltage deviation. Literature [8] establishes a neural network for sampling the output voltage of the converter to realize fault diagnosis. When analyzing the working state of the inverter circuit, it is necessary to consider both the control transition and the condition transition of the circuit. The control transition refers to the topology change of the power electronic circuit caused by the control signal of the power tube, and the conditional transition refers to the topology change of the power electronic circuit caused by the change of the state of the circuit itself leading to the change of the on-off state of the uncontrollable device. Most of the inverter diagnosis methods are based on the traditional switching function model. The traditional switching function model can only describe the control transition of the circuit, and it is difficult to accurately describe the condition transition that may occur under fault conditions, so the accuracy of the described fault circuit state characteristics cannot be guaranteed. Literature [9] considers the condition changes of the circuit and uses the output current as the identification vector to establish a hybrid logic dynamic model to realize the open-circuit fault diagnosis of the inverter. However, similar to most previous models, this inverter model does not consider the influence of clamp diodes on the circuit, and the freewheeling effect of clamp diodes cannot be ignored in practical situations.Literature [10] proposed a converter fault diagnosis model based on the rough set decision table. Based on the acquisition of the three-phase output current energy value, the decision table was established, and the rough set method was used to simplify the decision table, which not only can diagnose faults but also has good performance. Adaptability: literature [11] used a combination of wavelet analysis and neural network diagnosis method for the rectifier fault of HXDl heavy-haul freight locomotive. First, the fault feature vector of the rectifier output voltage waveform was extracted by wavelet analysis, and then the BP neural network was improved based on a genetic algorithm. The algorithm establishes the correspondence between the fault feature vector and the fault mode. Literature [12] proposes a fault diagnosis method for analog circuits that combines optimal wavelet packets and extreme learning machines. Based on the degree of feature deviation, wavelet bases are selected to participate in feature extraction, and then extreme learning machines are introduced to discriminate fault types. There is a clear advantage in time. Literature [13] studies the converter fault diagnosis method based on the knowledge base, extracts the fault features from the data of various types of faults obtained in advance, establishes the knowledge base, and inputs the data of the unknown fault type into the knowledge base for comparison. Get a diagnosis. Literature [14] comprehensively uses two methods of principal component analysis and support vector machine for fault diagnosis of power electronic rectifier. First, the principal component analysis method is used to extract the fault eigenvalues of the three-phase rectifier, and then the model established by the support vector machine is used and realizes fault diagnosis.When using quantitative analysis to diagnose faults, it is necessary to establish a system model first and then use the model to analyze and calculate various indicators of the research object. In the model-based fault diagnosis method, the mathematical model of the system is used to obtain the expected data of the system, and the deviation between the actual operating state and the expected state of the system is judged by the residual between the expected data and the observed input and output data. Fault diagnosis is made by analyzing the residual signal [15]. Generally speaking, such methods include the state estimation method, Parameter Estimation method, and Parity Space method. The fault diagnosis method based on state estimation mainly uses observers or filters to estimate the state of the system and then compare the system state with the constructed system health or fault model for fault diagnosis [16]. The basic principle of fault diagnosis based on parameter estimation is that if a fault occurs, the process parameters of the system will change, and the changes of process parameters will also affect the parameters of the system model. Therefore, by observing the system model, according to the changes in the system parameters for fault diagnosis [17], the fault diagnosis method based on equivalence space first establishes the mathematical relationship between the system input and output and then diagnoses the fault by checking whether the input and output values ​​obtained from the system sensors satisfy the equivalence relationship obtained by the mathematical model. In the analytical redundant fault diagnosis method, the difference value obtained after the consistency test of multiple variables is called the residual signal [18]. When the system is in a healthy state, the residuals should have zero mean, and the occurrence of faults will cause deviations in the residuals, so the deviation of the residuals is used to diagnose whether the system has faults. The consistency check in analytical redundancy is usually to compare the observed signal obtained by the sensor with the estimated value from the mathematical model and obtain the residual to diagnose the fault of the system [19].


## 3. Processing of Sample Imbalance Problem Based on Adversarial Neural Network

In classical supervised machine learning, the number of samples of each category of training samples is generally similar or equal, but when applied to real-world scenarios, the problem of sample imbalance often occurs. For example, there are far more positive samples than negative samples in the rotor qualification test in this article. When these problems arise, the training model robustness will definitely suffer.In order to reduce the impact of underfitting caused by unbalanced samples, an adversarial neural network is constructed through the dynamic game between the recognizer and the generator, and the sample capacity of the negative samples is expanded. At the data level, it achieves a balanced effect with positive samples while increasing the diversity of negative samples.The sample image is analyzed with the rotor windings in the foreground and the background, including the hooks on the commutator and other nonwinding areas. By separating the front and background of the image, a separate rotor winding and background part are obtained, and then the two parts are randomly combined, and a new sample image can be obtained by combining the image enhancement method. The common image front and background separation techniques include the background difference method, optical flow field method, and frame difference method. Since the overall detection scheme adopted in this article is a single static image, which lacks the frame information before and after the image, only some experimental improvements and summaries are made on the background difference method.The background difference method usually refers to a method that first assumes that the background is static, then uses the obtained image and the background image to perform a difference operation, and finally realizes the target recognition in the detection area by combining with threshold segmentation. This article has carried out two experimental analyses on this.The Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is estimated using the weighted sum of the Gaussian model established in advance on the probability density distribution of sample data. Then, a common statistical method of projecting the probability of belonging to the corresponding class. In the field of image processing, the Gaussian distribution model is used to model each pixel on the image, and the model parameters are optimized and updated through the expectation–maximization algorithm, which can effectively overcome certain influences caused by illumination changes and is mostly used for moving target detection.In the mixed Gaussian background modeling, the image background information is represented by the probability density of the repeated pixel sample values, and the target pixels are analyzed by methods such as differential statistics. Based on the assumption that image pixels are independent of each other, the image pixels are randomly generated in the sequence image, and the Gaussian distribution model is used to describe the regularity of image pixel color distribution. After that, multiple Gaussian distributions are weighted and superimposed in combination with different weights so as to realize the overall modeling of the image.The mixed Gaussian distribution model was established based on the rotor winding image, the pixel samples at timet obey the mixed Gaussian distribution, and the corresponding probability density function is as follows:(1)PXt=∑i=1nWi,tηXt,μi,t,τi,t,ηXt,μi,t,τi,t=1τi,t1/2e−1/2xt−μi,tTτi,t−1xt−μi,t,τi,t=σi,t2I.In the above formula,n is the total number of Gaussian distribution modes established by the model, Wi,t is the weight of the ith Gaussian distribution at time t, and the sum of the n modes is 1. At time t, ηXt,μi,t,τi,t is the corresponding ith Gaussian distribution, where the mean is μi,t, the covariance matrix is τi,t, the variance is σi,t, and I is the three-dimensional standard identity matrix.Generally speaking, the steps to achieve image front and background separation based on the Gaussian mixture model are as follows:① The algorithm initializes the Gaussian model and compares the deviation of the firstk Gaussian models with the image pixel X. If it can satisfy the 3 σ criterion, it is a distribution model that can match it, and the value of k is generally 3∼6:(2)Xt−μi,t−1≤3σi,t−1.When the matching pattern satisfies the requirements of the background condition, it means that the pixel belongs to the background; otherwise, the opposite is true.② The algorithm updates the weights of the matching patterns.Mi,t=1, if the pattern matches successfully; otherwise, it is 0. The algorithm then normalizes the weights of all modes, and α is the learning rate.(3)Wi,t=1−αWi,t−1+αMi,t.For the unmatched model, no change is made to its standard deviation and meanu, and the parameter update method of the successfully matched Gaussian model is performed according to the following formula:(4)ρ=α⋅ηXt|μk,σk,μt=1−ρμt−1+ρXt,σt2=1−ρσt−12+ρXt−μtTXt−μt.③ If the matching fails, the algorithm replaces the current pixel value with the mean value for the Gaussian model with the smallest weight and replaces the standard deviation with the larger value. Then, the algorithm sorts each pattern in descending order ofW/α2 size and selects the first N patterns as the image background, and N needs to satisfy the following formula. Among them, the parameter T represents the proportion of the background (0.5 < T < 1).(5)N=argmin∑k=1nwk>T.The algorithm repeats the above steps to perform matching detection betweenXt and the first N Gaussian models. If the match is successful, it means that the pixel is the background point; otherwise, it is the foreground point.In the image processing open-source library OpenCV, the GrabCut segmentation algorithm uses the Gaussian mixture model to easily separate the front and the background. For the rotor winding image experiment, the results are shown in Figures1 and 2.Figure 1
Background separation of bright pieces. (a) Bright parts. (b) Foreground separation map.
(a)(b)Figure 2
Background separation of dark objects. (a) Dark parts. (b) Foreground separation map.
(a)(b)Since the detected image is intercepted at the same position, the algorithm directly uses the missing picture as the background image and then combines the unilateral image and other differential operations to obtain the foreground image, that is, the image of the rotor winding part. Next, the algorithm uses other images and the obtained foreground image to perform a difference operation to obtain a new background image and then combines different foreground images and background images to obtain a new sample image through image enhancement.The specific operation process is shown in Figure3.Figure 3
Process of generating negative samples.Through the separation and fusion of the front and the background of the rotor winding image, we combine the image enhancement technology to obtain a new negative sample image. The experimental results show that the new sample is still different from the original sample, but it cannot meet the diversity needs well.Adversarial neural network (GAN) is a deep learning model based on unsupervised learning based on the idea of game theory. The model framework mainly includes a Generative Model and a Discriminative Model, and an ideal output result is obtained through the mutual game learning of these two models. At present, GAN is mostly used for image generation, and it is also involved in semantic segmentation and data enhancement.Taking image generation as an example, the basic principle of GAN can be understood as building a generative networkG (Generator) and a recognition network D (Discriminator). Among them, G is a network that generates pictures, the input is random noise z, and the corresponding output is G(z). D is a network for judging the true and false pictures, the input is a true and false picture x, and the output D(x) represents the probability of judging that x is a real picture. If the result is 1, it means that the probability that x is a real picture is 100%. On the contrary, if the output is 0, it means that x can never be a real picture; it must be a simulated picture generated by noise. In the model training process, the goal of generating network G is to use noise to simulate as much as possible to generate real pictures, which are used to deceive the discrimination network D. The goal of D is to try to distinguish the image generated by the G network in the input x from the real image. G and D constitute a dynamic zero-sum game process. Ideally, G can generate images G(z) that are hard enough for D to discriminate between real and fake, so D(G(z)) = 0.5 at this time. Finally, a suitable generative model G can be obtained, which can be used to generate pictures similar to real pictures, and the recognizer cannot identify true and false.The above is the core principle of GAN, and the mathematical expression of its objective function is as follows:(6)minGmaxDVD,G=EX−PdataxlogDx+EX−PGxlog1−DGz.Among them,x represents the real image, z is the input of the G network, which represents the randomly generated noise, and G(z) represents the image generated by the generator simulation. D(x) represents the probability that the recognition module judges whether the real picture is real. For a real image x, the closer the value of D(x) to 1, the stronger the recognition network’s ability to identify the authenticity of the image, while D(G(z)) represents the probability that the recognition network judges whether the image generated by the generator is real.The goal of theG network is to increase the value of D(G(z) as much as possible; that is, G should hope that the difference between the image generated by training and the real image is getting smaller and smaller. However, the goal of the D network is to discriminate between real and fake pictures; that is, as the recognition ability of the D network increases, D(x) should be larger, and D(G(z)) should be smaller. With continuous training, ideally, the above equation converges to an equilibrium state. The schematic diagram of the action of the adversarial network is shown in Figure 4.Figure 4
Schematic diagram of the role of the adversarial network.When the GAN model network is first trained, the model first partially trains theD network and then trains the G network. According to the objective function, the stochastic gradient is added to obtain the maximum value when training the D network, and the minimum value is obtained by subtracting the stochastic gradient when training the G network. The whole training process is carried out alternately in two stages, and finally, a dynamic balance is achieved. The schematic diagram of model training is shown in Figure 5.Figure 5
Schematic diagram of model training.In order to improve the extraction of image features, DCGAN is obtained by combining GAN and CNN, which replaces the previousG network structure and D network structure with a convolutional neural network in structure. In order to improve the quality of generated samples and the speed of model convergence, DCGAN has also made some changes in the structure of the convolutional neural network:①
For the pooling layer, the discriminative networkD is replaced with strided convolution, while the generation network G chooses the microstepped magnitude convolution.②
In order to speed up the model convergence and avoid the overfitting problem, batch normalization is used in both the generative modelG and the discriminant model D, and the fully connected hidden layer is removed at the same time so that the network becomes a fully convolutional network.③
In order to better fit the model, in theG network, except for the output layer of the last layer, which uses Tanh, all other layers use ReLU as the activation function. In the D network, all layers use Leaky ReLU as the activation function.④
In the generative networkG, a neural network model similar to deconvolution is used, and upsampling is performed through the transposed convolutional layer operation, while the discriminant network D only uses an ordinary convolutional neural network for feature extraction.The structure of the generative networkG in DCGAN is shown in Figure 6.Figure 6
Structure diagram of the generation network.The structure of the recognition networkD in DCGAN is shown in Figure 7.Figure 7
Structure diagram of the recognition network.Combined with the rotor winding picture analysis, the modified DCGAN network structure is used to expand the insufficient negative samples. Among them, the specific configuration of the parameters is as follows: the input image size is 160∗160, the learning rate is 0.0002, the batch size is 32, the iteration is 1000 times, and the output image size is the same as the input size.The cost-sensitive method refers to adjusting the attention of the optimization model to small samples by adding a penalty function to the objective function, which is generally used to deal with the problem of imbalanced samples from the algorithm level. The common forms are those based on a cost-sensitive matrix and based on a cost-sensitive vector. In common classification problems, it is assumed that there areN types of samples in the training set, and the cost of misclassification of different categories is represented in a cost-sensitive matrix cost of NN. cost[i, j] represents the penalty cost of misclassifying the object of category i to the object of category j, and the optimal state is achieved when the sum of the cost matrix is the smallest [20].(7)cost1,1cost1,2⋯cost1,Ncost2,1cost2,2⋯cost2,N⋮⋮⋱⋮costN,1costN,2⋯costN,N.Among them,costi,j∈0,∞. When j = i, costi,j=0, which means that there is no misclassification.The penalty method based on the cost-sensitive vector is for a single sample. For samplexn,yn, we take a K-dimensional cost-sensitive vector costn, where costn∈0,∞, the value of the k-th dimension represents the penalty cost of being wrongly identified as the k-th class. The cost-sensitive vector is combined with the samples, and iterative learning is performed with the form xn,yn,costn as the input. Relatively speaking, the cost-sensitive matrix method is a special form of the cost-sensitive vector method; that is, the misclassification penalty vector is set to be the same for all samples of a certain class.Usually, the use of cost-sensitive methods to deal with the problem of sample imbalance requires specifying a cost-sensitive matrix or vector first, and the key is to set the misclassification penalty or misclassification weight. In actual use, the size of the weight in the cost-sensitive matrix or vector is often specified according to the proportion of the sample and other information. For example, if it is assumed that the training samples are divided into three categories, namely, category a, categoryb, and category c, and the corresponding number of samples is x: y: z, the corresponding cost-sensitive matrix is as follows [21]:(8)cost=0yy+zzy+zxx+z0zx+zxx+yyx+y0.


## 4. Inverter Diagnosis System of Electric Locomotive Based on Adversarial Neural Network

The system adopts the C/S (client/server) structure system, in which the auxiliary inverter fault diagnosis host is the client and the vehicle diagnosis host is the server, and the two communicate through the TCP protocol. The overall structure design of the auxiliary inverter diagnosis system is shown in Figure8.Figure 8
Design of the overall structure of the system.The system can be divided into three functional modules: real-time module, data processing module, and network transmission module. The functional module design diagram is shown in Figure9.Figure 9
System functional module design diagram.After obtaining the above system model, the effect of the system model is verified, and the system structure is constructed through computer simulation, and the inverter image recognition and fault diagnosis effects of the system in this article are verified, and the results shown in Tables1 and 2 are obtained.Table 1
Image recognition effect of electric locomotive inverter diagnosis system based on adversarial neural network.
NumberImage identification191.05289.38388.04493.08592.76691.12787.84887.04991.501089.301187.121292.741389.091489.451588.521688.221789.041893.571989.622088.612189.342293.812393.512490.522590.402692.352787.532887.712993.553087.373193.053292.643388.223493.703587.993692.733793.213889.813989.724093.534191.634293.864391.754490.514590.154689.744791.504892.374990.005090.245187.025288.685391.705490.895587.125689.245791.745893.805992.636091.13Table 2
Fault diagnosis effect of electric locomotive inverter diagnosis system based on adversarial neural network.
NumberTroubleshooting188.52273.35376.80481.33574.68673.03784.10874.50976.141075.111177.121277.141384.141478.971571.551679.531774.541879.831980.242071.232186.852275.942378.622478.882579.772675.542786.272874.062981.433086.933177.213285.883374.033485.923575.743683.623782.983884.233980.394076.794179.024276.714381.354481.654576.284679.324773.114871.894985.875084.125186.745275.315373.405476.975578.095671.725775.705872.255977.666085.75From the above research, it can be seen that the electric locomotive inverter diagnosis system based on the adversarial neural network proposed in this article has a good practical effect.


## 5. Conclusion

While the auxiliary inverter plays an important role, it often fails. Therefore, it is very necessary to assist the inverter system fault diagnosis technology to quickly and accurately realize the location and diagnosis of the fault location. During the use of the train, the probability of failure of the auxiliary inverter circuit ranks first in the entire system. Therefore, the fault diagnosis of the inverter circuit has also become the primary problem to be solved by the train auxiliary inverter system. Moreover, in the auxiliary inverter system, the failure of switching devices such as high-power IGBTs will cause great harm to the normal operation of the train. In particular, when an open-circuit fault occurs, the load system is still in operation, which is difficult to detect and may have serious consequences. In this article, the inverter diagnosis system of the electric locomotive is constructed by combining adversarial neural networks to improve the real-time performance of the inverter diagnosis of the electric locomotive. The experimental research shows that the inverter diagnosis system for electric locomotives based on the adversarial neural network proposed in this article has a good practical effect.



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