A computer measurement system, designed and built by authors, dedicated to location and description of partial discharges (PD) in oil power transformers examined by means of the acoustic emission (AE) method is presented. The measurement system is equipped with 8 measurement channels and ensures: monitoring of signals, registration of data in real time within a band of 25–1000 kHz in laboratory and real conditions, basic and advanced analysis of recorded signals. The basic analysis carried out in the time, frequency and time-frequency domains deals with general properties of the AE signals coming from PDs. The advanced analysis, performed in the discrimination threshold domain, results in identification of signals coming from different acoustic sources as well as location of these sources in the examined transformers in terms of defined by authors descriptors and maps of these descriptors on the side walls of the tested transformer tank. Examples of typical results of laboratory tests carried out with the use of the built-in measurement system are presented.

In the paper, the results of investigations on the properties of acoustic emission signals generated in a tested pressure vessel are presented. The investigations were performed by repeating several times the following procedure: an increase in pressure, maintaining a given pressure level, a further increase in pressure, and then maintaining the pressure at new determined level. During the tests the acoustic emission signals were recorded by the measuring system 8AE-PD with piezoelectric sensors D9241A. The used eight-channel measuring system 8AE-PD enables the monitoring, recording and then basic and advanced analysis of signals.

The results of basic analysis carried out in domain of time and the results of advanced analysis carried out in the discrimination threshold domain of the recorded acoustic emission signals are presented in the paper.

In the framework of the advanced analysis, results are described by the defined by the author descriptors with acronyms ADC, ADP and ADNC. Such description is based on identifying the properties of amplitude distributions of acoustic emission signals by assigning them the level of advancement. It is shown that for signals including continoues AE or single burst AE signals descriptions of such registered signals by means of ADC, ADP and ADNC descriptors and by Upp and Urms descriptors provide identical ordering of registered acoustic emission signals. For complex signals, the description using ADC, ADP and ADNC descriptors based on the analysis of amplitude distributions of recorded signals gives the order of signals with more accurate connection with deformational processes being sources of acoustic emission signals.

Within the maximum likelihood method an optimal algorithm for polarization target selection against the background of interfering signal reflected from the earth’s surface is synthesized. The algorithm contains joint operations of spectral interference rejection and their polarization compensation by means of certain combinations of interchannel subtraction of signals of different polarizations. The physical features of the elements of the polarization scattering matrix are investigated for the technical implementation of the synthesized algorithm.