MH-WMG: A Multi-Head Wavelet-Based MobileNet with Gated Linear Attention for Power Grid Fault Diagnosis

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in power systems to boost efficiency, reliability, and automation. This study introduces an end-to-end, AI-driven fault-diagnosis pipeline built around a Multi-Head Wavelet-based MobileNet with Gated Linear Attention (MH-WMG). The network takes time-series signals converted into images as input and branches into three heads that, respectively, localize the fault area, classify the fault type, and predict the distance bin for all short-circuit faults. Evaluation employs the canonical Kundur two-area four-machine system, partitioned into six regions, twelve fault scenarios (including normal operation), and twelve predefined distance bins. MH-WMG achieves high performance: perfect accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 (1.00) for fault-area detection; strong fault-type identification (accuracy = 0.9604, precision = 0.9625, recall = 0.9604, and F1 = 0.9601); and robust distance-bin prediction (accuracy = 0.8679, precision = 0.8725, recall = 0.8679, and F1 = 0.8690). The model is compact and fast (2.33 M parameters, 44.14 ms latency, 22.66 images/s) and outperforms baselines in both accuracy and efficiency. The pipeline decisively outperforms conventional time-series methods. By rapidly pinpointing and classifying faults with high fidelity, it enhances grid resilience, reduces operational risk, and enables more stable, intelligent operation, demonstrating the value of AI-driven fault detection for future power-system reliability.