Abstract
This paper presents an improved reflectometry-based method for the detection of soft faults on RF coaxial cables using chaotic signals. This method is often referred to as chaos time-domain reflectometry (CTDR). A combination of logistic map and Bernoulli map-based chaotic signals is used for reflectometry experiments. Different types of soft faults are created, and the possible detection of these faults on RG-58 coaxial cables has been experimentally demonstrated for the first time using CTDR. The properties of chaotic signals show their potential towards detecting any kind of fault using the reflectometry method. The experimental results show the efficiency of the approach for different types of soft fault detections. Moreover, this method can be used for live cable fault monitoring with low implementation cost.