A multilevel proactive health monitoring system for DC power supply system in seafloor observatory network

Abstract The power supply system (PSS) in seafloor observatory network (SON) accomplishes continuous power supply and massive data transmission, satisfying the operational requirements of scientific observation instruments on the seafloor. The submarine PSS consists of heterogeneous DC/DC converters to realize the multi-stage power transformation. This paper mainly proposes a multilevel proactive health monitoring system for the PSS in SON, including system level, circuit level, and component level. The analysis of performance consistency reflects the overall conformity of batch DC/DC converters, representing the system-level health condition. The measurement of frequency-domain performances reflects the stability margin of DC/DC converters, representing the circuit-level health condition. The detection of degradation degree for critical components reflects the internal characteristics of DC/DC converters, representing the component-level health condition. Furthermore, the fuzzy comprehension evaluation method can merge the multilevel monitoring results and comprehensively evaluate the health condition of PSS in SON. The proposed system can further contribute to predictive maintenance and promote the long-term and high-reliability operation of SON.