An online pollution monitoring equipment is developed based on boundary transmission characteristics of optical waveguide and artificial neural network (ANN)

which can measure both equivalent salt deposit density (ESDD) and non-soluble deposit density (NSDD) on insulators’ surfaces. By analyzing the effects of the optical waveguide’s surface pollution on the reflected beam

the optical waveguide and the optical source are designed. A series of validating and calibrating tests have been made under different humidity

different salt density and ash density conditions

from which a large quantity of sample data are obtained and a unique ANN model is built and trained. The inspecting and running results show that this equipment together with the embedded ANN model can be used to monitor ESDD and NSDD of the insulators at once

and with satisfactory test precision.