New-Tech Europe | May 2017

Wireless Special Edition

as electricity, gas and water. The benefits will also be felt in situations where smart metering is paired with other municipal automation and remote monitoring systems, such as waste collection, smart parking services and other forms of urban and environmental surveillance. In these cases, using cellular communication makes engineers’ jobs much easier than it would be if they were required to use a more niche or proprietary radio technology. Because cellular is based on open standards, it offers better interoperability between different smart metering devices and multiple OEM suppliers. Cellular technology can therefore help minimize network design complexity and secure quality of service by reducing radio signal collision and interference. Smart metering security Another important aspect of smart meter design is security. Security is a fast-evolving landscape and the complex IT networks that utilities companies deploy will need to operate for a very long time. Security will therefore require continued attention throughout a network’s lifetime. The 1983 WorldGames quote, “Hey, I don’t believe that any system is totally secure,” is not just a science fiction problem. It is not difficult to imagine a catastrophic scenario where smart meters get hacked, especially once millions are deployed and have been operating in the field for many years. A malfunction or a malicious attack on smart meters’ firmware could result in millions of devices turning off simultaneously, risking massive damage to a large region or to an entire country’s grid. AMI must therefore safeguard security over

consumers. According to ABI Research, the number of smart meters deployed worldwide by 2020 will reach 780 million for electricity, 150 million for gas and 90 million for water. It’s an enormous market opportunity. Central to it is the choice of connectivity technology, and this must be pre- determined before implementation, typically respecting national energy regulators’ requirements. Cellular communication: continuous innovation turns smart metering into the industrial Internet of Things While Power Line Communication (PLC) and various versions of radio frequency (RF) radio communication technologies have historically been used for large-scale metering infrastructures, cellular communication is now the preferred choice for the

lion’s share of new deployments. This is the result of government mandates, which require the use of technology based on specifications from open standards. Utilities companies are also increasingly keen to use existing public cellular networks. Doing so reduces the capital and operational cost of large- scale roll-outs, because utilities do not need to allocate resources to design, install, operate and maintain a private network. Instead, they can focus on their core business. The advantage of cellular open standards for utilities Cellular open standards bring additional benefits in interoperability, coverage and capacity, as well as other critical aspects, which are especially pertinent for multiservice utilities. A good example is when AMI platforms are used by utilities that operate multiple metering applications, such

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