Control scheme on electricity/ gas/ water meters that can provide environmentally harmonized life style by reducing energy consumption at homes has been considered as one of the most significant technologies. Especially, research and development on the fusion of radio communication and meter implementation technologies that effectively and surely realizes automatic and autonomous control, data reading and monitoring on each meter at homes under emergency situations has become a further significant topic. This system is named as Smart Utility Networks (SUN) and a global research and development on SUN system is eagerly conducted. NICT has also been engaged in such research and development on SUN, has proposed PHY and MAC specifications as a SUN standard proposal that is under standardization in IEEE 802 committee and has successfully let the proposal included in the latest draft. However, NICT and other organizations have not conducted the proof test for such specifications for realization.
Home > Press Release > NICT Successfully Conducted the Proof Test On Smart Meter Radio Devices That Enables Low-Power Operations
NICT Successfully Conducted the Proof Test On Smart Meter Radio Devices That Enables Low-Power Operations
- Automatic and autonomous control, meter-reading and monitoring via radio communications under both ordinal and emergency situations -
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (hereinafter called NICT, President: Hideo Miyahara) has developed smart meter radio devices compliant to the smart utility networks (hereinafter SUN) standard draft that enables automatic and autonomous control, meter-reading and monitoring, and is under standardization process in IEEE 802 committee, and has successfully conducted the proof test where metering data on gas meters are automatically and surely collected. The developed radio device can automatically construct data collecting topology with multi-hop transmission capability linking up with other devices after it is turned on. Moreover, the radio device realizes radio communication scheme (specifying PHY and MAC technologies) that enables several year continuous low-power operations driven by batteries thereby provides steady performances under emergency situations as well as ordinal situations.
The developed radio device is surely compliant to the radio specifications in the current IEEE 802 standard draft where NICT had contributed. One of the remarkable points of the device is low-power multi-hop transmission management capability that automatically and autonomously constructs data collection/circulation topology among meters when they are turned on, in which any pair of communicating devices synchronize with each other in the very short periods for data listening/ receiving and transmitting thereby achieve one hundredth lower power consumption than the conventional case without synchronization. Such a low-power performance confirms the possibility of long-lived battery-powered operations for several years without battery replacement.
The standardization in IEEE 802 committee is to be completed in the end of 2011. With those achievements NICT is going to provide safe and relieved society by ICT, with also contributing to Japanese regulatory modification for radio facilities.
IEEE 802 committee is a committee engaged in standardization for communication systems such as LAN in IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) that is a non-profit professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation related to electricity. In the committee, a working group (WG) named IEEE 802.15 deals with the standardization for wireless personal area networks (WPAN). This WG accommodates several task groups (TGs) as depicted below, each of which is organized according to its goal.
IEEE 802.15.4: IEEE 802.15.4 is a TG that has standardized the PHY and MAC specifications for low-rate wireless personal area networks. In the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, PHY specifications define 20 kbps, 40 kbps and 250 kbps data transmissions on 868 MHz, 902 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands respectively. Moreover, MAC specifications define a concept of device group named PAN and access control schemes such as TDMA or CSMA held in the PAN.
IEEE 802.15.4g: IEEE 802.15.4g is a TG that is standardizing the necessary PHY amendments in the existing IEEE 802.15.4 standard that are required in order to realize SUN. The latest version of the draft defines additional modulation schemes and frequency bands, and expanded data payload.
IEEE 802.15.4e: IEEE 802.15.4e is a TG that is standardizing the accompanying MAC modifications with any of PHY amendments in the existing IEEE 802.15.4 standard as for IEEE 802.15.4g. The latest version of the draft defines intermittent data exchange functions with low-power consumption as one of the typical modifications related to SUN. (IEEE 802 committee web site: http://www.ieee802.org/, IEEE 802.15WG web site including anchors to other related TGs: http://www.ieee802.org/15/) Multi-hop transmission means a transmission that includes more than one relaying by other radio device(s) than transmitter and receiver devices, which is different from the direct transmission between devices. The reachable range of the multi-hop transmission can be proportionally expanded to the number of relaying. Moreover, the multi-hop transmission enables the same reachable range as a direct transmission with lower transmission power for each device than that for the direct transmission. Furthermore, the multi-hop transmission can also provide relaying route avoiding obstacles for radio waves thereby eliminates radio blind spots. PHY and MAC both mean concepts that express subdivided communication functions by assuming hieratical layers.
PHY layer: PHY layer defines the electrical and physical specifications for devices. In particular, it defines the relationship between a device and a transmission medium, such as a copper or optical cable and connector types for the cables.
MAC (Medium Access Control) layer: MAC layer provides addressing and channel access control that enable several terminals or network nodes to communicate within a multi-point network, which are represented by the MAC addresses peculiar to communication devices or by the time divided access scheme; TDMA.
Supplementary Information
Fig. 2 shows a developed radio device for the smart meter and Table 1 shows its specifications. Fig. 3 shows a concept of access control employed in the developed radio device. The beacon signal is usually turned off in order to avoid excessive power consumption owing to periodical transmission and it is transmitted only when requested. There are two types of periods; the active period and the sleep period as in Fig. 3. Only the active period includes listening/ receiving state of devices. In contrast, the sleep period indicates sleeping state of the devices except for the case the devices continuously receive a data frame from the last active period as in Fig. 3, which can decrease the average power consumption by exploiting the existence of sleep period.
Table 1 Specifications of the developed device | |
Size | 20cm×17cm×7.5cm |
Frequency band | 953.0 MHz |
Transmission power | 10 mW |
Modulation scheme | Filtered-2/4FSK |
Data rate | 50, 100, 200kbps |
PHY payload length | 0~2047octets(1 octet = 8 bits) |
Access control scheme | Contention access in the active period |
Routing scheme | Routing to the root in the tree shaped topology |
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