New-Tech Europe | May 2017

Wireless Special Edition

their module firmware over a carrier network.

time, which is why a key requirement of smart meters is that their firmware (the embedded software that controls the smart meter) can be updated over the air (OTA). Sending an engineer to do this would be both expensive and slow – prohibitively so in a situation where millions of meters need to be upgraded, as could be the case following a security breach. Doing the update wirelessly removes the need for a service engineer to be sent out. An OTA firmware upgrade is typically hard to achieve in most sub-GHz low- power radio networks, which generally only support downlink rates of a few hundred bytes of information per day to each device. Conversely, efficient wireless upgrades are possible with Firmware Over The Air (FOTA), a feature used extensively in mobile phones, and now supported in cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. It enables users to update

local HAN data concentrators to the utilities’ data management systems. Cellular is also used in metering communication hubs, the so-called ‘Smart Meter Gateways’. This is an AMI topology, successfully deployed or planned in many European countries and in Japan, where residential and commercial buildings use cellular to connect electricity meters or separate gateway devices to the utilities’ back-haul meter data management systems. The gateway device is then used to provide connectivity through industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) wireless RF (Wireless M-Bus 868 in Europe, Wi-SUN 920MHz in Japan and ZigBee) to meters and other systems in the building. The move to 4G LTE Their cost-efficiency and sufficient data speeds mean 2G and 3G connectivity have been commonly used in smart meters globally. However, for future

The use of cellular technology in smart metering

Because of these inherent benefits, cellular technology is currently enjoying widespread use in smart metering deployments, providing end-to-end connectivity in metering infrastructure. A large share of residential and commercial networks are being deployed using 2G General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) solutions, while industrial smart meters are predominantly based on 3G technology. Even when utilities deploy point- to-multipoint solutions based on short-range radio protocols (such as wireless M-Bus 169 MHz, or other proprietary Low-Power Wide-Area radio technology), cellular is still used to provide back-haul connectivity from

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