This full text paper was peer-reviewed at the direction of IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society prior to the

acceptance and publication.

Contactless Electric Fence Fault Detection

System
Ibrahim Al-Bahadly & Ryan Simpson
School of Engineering and Advanced Technology
Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Email: i.h.albahadly@massey.ac.nz

Abstract — Electric fence fault finding can be tedious and time

consuming, something that farmers often do not have. This can
have a direct impact on the farmer’s lifestyle as the fence may
become physically damaged, stock may escape, and time will be
spent fixing these problems. This paper describes a technique to
detect different types of faults in a farm electric fence system.
The method of contactless fault finding is commonly used but the
sensing device must be in very close proximity of the wire
(<5mm). However, the new method has been tested to be able to
sense faults at large distances (>1m) and the required detection
system to be light weight. Ideally, in the future, this device would
be able to be attached to a drone so it is able to autonomously
detect faults.
Keywords— Electric fence, fault finding, contactless, current,
detection, magnetic field, antenna.
Figure 1 - Fault finding example
I. INTRODUCTION
In the agricultural industry, eg sheep, beef and dairy
farming, the stock must be contained within fenced paddocks. The above (conventional) method to fault find an electric
A common practice to achieve this is to electrify the fence fence can end up being very time consuming and expensive.
lines. An electric fence energizer takes energy from the power
source and delivers it to the fence as a series of high voltage The current products on the market measure current in the
fence wire from the induced magnetic field with a small
pulses. When an animal touches the fence, it completes the
inductor. This technique is contactless but must be in close
circuit and receives a shock. The electric fence acts as a
proximity of <5mm. Therefore, this paper is going to propose
physiological barrier to the farm stock rather than a physical a new method of fault finding.
barrier [1]. When an electric fence is used on large farms,
there can end up being several kilometers of electric fence This research paper is presenting the method followed to
wire. Due to this, it can be common for there to be faults in the obtain a way of fault finding for an electric fence. The device
electric fence. These faults can result in the fence not that will be used to detect such faults will be a type of antenna.
performing properly and animals may be able to escape. A type antenna was selected to use as it is simple and can be
light weight and portable, this is desirable for attaching to a
It is common practice for a farmer to regularly check the drone. This research is going to be constrained by keeping the
voltage of their farm fences. If the voltage is lower than 4-5kV device light < 500g, and able to detect faults from a distance
[2], the fence then needs to be checked for faults. The current of > 0.5m. These will be considered as the fault detection
method of fault finding an electric fence can be very time device is to be designed to be carried by a quadcopter (drone).
consuming as it is done by using a current detection fault This will ultimately be able to autonomously fault find electric
finder like the ‘Smart Fix Fault Finder’ offered by Gallagher fences on large farms. Being able to accomplish this will save
[3]. It involves walking/ driving around the fence lines of the high amounts man hours’ fault finding.
farm starting from the energizer, checking the fence current
reading every 50-100m. When a junction point is met, the wire The faults can be caused by several different problems
with highest current is to be followed. Once the current (broken wire, over grown trees, etc.). These problems
reading drops off on the fault meter, the fault has been past. ultimately end up with the fence becoming short circuited to
the ground causing an electric fence fault [4].

978-1-5386-3460-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

Table 1 - Electrical characteristics of fence caused by different faults A. Calculating magnetic field from shorting to ground
From the Gallagher Smart Fix brochure [3], a typical fault
Fault Voltage Current can have a current draw of 20Ampere. A conservative 10
Over grown ampere current draw is used for the following calculation.
vegetation Reduced Increased Calculating how much magnetic field is induced from an
electric fence fault will help with antenna selection.
Broken wire
shorted to ground Reduced Increased
Broken insulator Reduced Increased
Poor earth Normal Normal
Normal / Normal /
Poor connection reduced reduced
past fault past fault B

Weather
conditions Reduced Increased

It can be seen from the above table [5] each type of fault
comes under their own sub category. Figure 3 - Induced magnetic field from current in long wire

Ɋ଴ ൌ ‫ ݁ܿܽ݌ݏ݁݁ݎ݂݂݋ݕݐ݈ܾ݅݅ܽ݁݉ݎ݁݌‬ൌ Ͷߨ ‫଻ିͲͳ כ‬
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS ‫ ܫ‬ൌ ͳͲ‫ܣ‬
‫ ݎ‬ൌ ͲǤͷ݉
This section will cover the methods used to discover a way
to locate different types of faults on a farm fence line (Table 1 ஜ ூ ସగ‫כ‬ଵ଴షళ ଵ଴
above) from a distance > 1m. ‫ ܤ‬ൌ ଶగబ ௥ ൌ ଶగ ଴Ǥହ
(1)

By reviewing the literature about fault finding electric
fences, it is apparent that an established way to find faults is to
measure voltage and current. With this information, a fence
can be tested to see if it is faulty and then able to locate the
problem. There are several issues when it comes to measuring
these parameters as an electric fence has a unique wave form.
An electric fence wave form consists of a short high voltage
pulse [6].
ൌ ͶǤͲͲͲ ‫ܶ ଺ିͲͳ כ‬

೏ಳ
ேగ௥ మ 
‫ ܫ‬ൌ ோ
೏೟
 (2)
B. Methods of contactless detecting current
The method for fault finding in this research must be
contactless. There are several ways to detect current in a
circuit without contact, but not all ways are suitable in the
application of an electric fence. An electric fence frequently
has outrigger insulators placed along the wire to hold it. This
means that the antenna used to detect current can’t wrap
around the wire or it will collide with the outrigger insulator.

Several different types of antenna’s where considered for

Figure 2 - Output signal from electric fence
From figure 2 the pulse can be seen to have a 6kV peak.
This wave form is from a fence with no fault. High voltages
like this can be damaging to standard measuring equipment.
As the pulse is very short the measuring equipment must be
quick enough to capture the wave form. This wave form must
also be stored to analysed at a later point.
the detection of current flow in a wire, however, many were
obstructed by the insulators or were overly complicated to
construct, such as the Rogowski coil. A standard air core coil
was selected as it is fast and easy to make. From equation (2),
[7], a 200mm diameter coil with 50turns would be sufficient to
pick up a signal from the magnetic field induced from 10A of
current flow.
C. Method for testing coil antenna on an electric fence
This section covers the experimental setup for testing the
coil antenna. The first test is to determine how well the
antenna could pick up a signal from a faulty electric fence.
To ensure results were consistent and minimise the effect of
 noise on readings, the antenna was held in the same
orientation and at the same distance from the fault through
every trial. After checking for faults with a commercially-
available electric fence tester (Smart Fix, Gallagher), a
dead-end 100-metre length of fence was tested with a coil
antenna.
The orientation of the antenna is important; the optimal
position is to have the coil cutting through as much of the
magnetic field lines as possible. Having the coil positioned
horizontal to the ground and in line with the fence wire
achieves this effect [8]. The coil orientation is shown in
figure 4. The terminals of the coil were soldered to a coaxial
cable with a BNC connector. This meant that the antenna
could be directly connected to the oscilloscope
(Cleverscope CS328) and help reduce noise by rejecting the
effect of the wires acting as an antenna. As the
oscilloscopes passive 10x test leads were not used, the
probe software setting was changed from 10x to 1x.
Figure 4 - Antenna orientation.
A test rig was setup on an ATV motorbike. This was used
to hold and power a laptop and a portable oscilloscope
(Cleverscope CS328). The antenna was attached to an
outrigger on the side of the ATV as this allows it to get
close to the fence without driving very close. The ATV
gives an easy means of transport to the different measuring
locations along the fence.
Figure 5 - Test rig on ATV
Several samples were taken at set points along the fence
line - five at 25m intervals and one 5m directly before and
after the fault location. A makeshift fault (shorted to
ground) was attached at 50m and tests were taken with both
the fault in place and not. This information was data logged
and saved to a laptop for further data analysis later on.
Figure 6 - Fence diagram showing sample points
At each point on the fence line where the measurements
were taken place, the following steps were as followed.
• ATV parked with antenna 1m away from electric
fence wire, measured with ruler.
• ATV engine turned off to rule out chance of noise
from engines spark/coil system.
• Oscilloscope set to stream data from antenna to
laptop. 10 sequential pulses captured and saved to
laptop.
• Move to next point along fence line and above
steps were repeated.
D. Signal conditioning
As the output signal from the antenna is very small, it must
be amplified and converted to a digital signal before the data
can be offloaded and processed on a microcontroller.
The amplitude of the signals from the coil antenna was
small (tens of mV), as these signals were being input into the
build in ADC of a Texas Instrument C2000 F28027 micro
controller with a logic voltage of 3.3V the signal needs to be
amplified before it can be processed in the micro controller.
As the signal is a small fast pulse, a specific operational
amplifier must be selected. The chosen amplifier was a Linear
Technology LT1358 operational amplifier. This was selected
as it had a low power consumption while still having a large
25Mhz gain bandwidth and a fast slew rate of 600V/us. These
specs were sufficient to amplify the quick pulse the electric
fence output. A test circuit was made on Vero-board as shown
in Figure 7. A pulse was simulated on a bench signal
generator; the simulated pulse was a representation of the
signal output of the coil antenna. This signal was input into the
amplifier circuit and both the input and output of the circuit
were monitored using an oscilloscope as shown in figure 8.
Figure shows an overall layout of the hardware. The output
data from the amplifier circuit was processed on a Texas
Instrument C2000 F28027 micro-controller. This was selected
as it has a fast 60Mhz clock and a 12-bit ADC (analog to
digital converter) capable of sampling 4.6million samples/s.
Having a fast ADC means that the data stream from the
amplifier will have a high resolution, this is necessary as the
pulses from the electric fence are very short.

Figure 7 - Operational amplifier circuit
Figure 8 – Input and output signal of the op-amp circuit.
Figure 9 – Overall hardware layout
E. Method of finding faults with increased current draw
The following experiments were based on the principle that
a fault on a fence line generally ends with the fence shorting to
ground. If the fence is shorting, current will be flowing
through the wire. From Table 1 it can be seen that common
faults generally increase the current flow in the electric fence
system.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The data from this study was gathered out in the field in a
controlled environment and was sampled ten times to ensure
the data was consistent. The data was captured on a portable
oscilloscope and recorded onto a laptop to later analyse. The
data was then simulated on a signal generator in the lab, the
signal was then amplified and converted to a digital signal
using an operational amplifier and an ADC.
Once the signal was conditioned and converted to a digital
signal, it was then processed on a Texas Instruments C2000
microcontroller.
The raw data was averaged and graphed using excel, shown
below in figures 10 & 11.
Figure 10 - Captured raw signal fence with no fault
Figure 11- Captured raw signal with fault (short to ground)
located at 50m
The proposed fault finding method was successful; the data
has a clear difference when a fault is applied to the fence line.
Further processing needs to be completed on the
microcontroller to develop a device which can autonomously
detect where a fault is. Figure 10 shows raw data from the
antenna; the signal has an average amplitude of approximately
11mV and this is purely noise being picked up from the
antenna. Looking at Figure 11 when the fence has a short
circuit fault applied at 50m, it can be seen there is a increase in
amplitude in the first section of the fence where current is
expected to be flowing. Once the fault has been past (>50m)
the amplitude of the signal decreases back down to
approximately 10mV (ambient noise being picked up from
antenna). Figure 11 clearly shows the point of the fault is
where the signal amplitude decreases at (50m). A test circuit
was made with a LT1358CN Operational amplifier, it was
configured with a gain of 100. This increased the voltage of
the signal to an appropriate voltage to process.
IV. CONCLUSION
The experimental results have shown that there is a present
signal when there is a short in the fence line. At 1 metre, the
current from an electric fence fault can be detected by the air
cored coil antenna. Such an antenna, which is small and light
weight, can be attached easily to a drone, and can be
automated to assist with fault finding an electric fence,
reducing man hours and thus cost. The following conclusions
can be made:
REFERENCES
[1] Tru-Test Limited, Powering Your Land, Electric Fence Manual,
Auckland: TRU-TEST GROUP, 2012.
[2] Stafix, “animal voltage requirements,” 2017. [Online]. Available:
https://www.stafix.com/en-nz/node/14195.
[3] Gallagher Group Limited, “Fault finder broucher,” 2016. [Online].
[4] Southern Africa Regional Programme Office, Maintaining Electric
Fencing, Harare: WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature, 1999.
[5] G. McGillan, “The Design of an Electric Fence Fault-Finder,”
Massey University, Auckland, 2009.
[6] J. McCutchan, Electric Fence Design Principles, Melbourne:
University of Melboune, 1980.
[7] S. Cantrell, “Some Notes on Magnetic Field Sensing for National
Semiconductor's Natcar Race”,
https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee192/sp13/pdf/emfsense.pdf, 2018.
[8] D. C. Giancoli, Physics for Scientists & Engineers with Modern
Physics, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc,
2009.

• A sensitive antenna has been designed and tested

which is able to detect current flow in an electric
fence wire which correlates with a fence having a
fault.
• Theoretical methods have been devised, which are
able to pinpoint the location of a fault in an electric
fence system.
• When the type of fence fault consisted of an electric
arc (spark), EM noise was generated and a different
method of finding the fault was implemented.
• A simply light weigh device designed for fault
finding an electric fence can be implemented with a
simple coil antenna, a small amplification / signal
conditioning circuit and a micro controller. This
complete system could be bundled up into a small
embedded device and carried around a farm using a
drone.

With this in mind, future trials could be completed to

improve the proposed fault finding methods. The proposed
method only detects common electric fence faults that have an
increased current draw. However, some less common faults
may occur within the fence line and still maintain a normal
current draw, such as grounding problems. Further research is
needed.