Towards visual smart metering exploiting wM-Bus and DLMS/COSEM

Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) is one of the key issues in modern energy efficiency technologies, which are expected to bring on great benefits to both customers and utility companies (electricity, gas and water). Several efforts have been recently made in developing suitable communication protocols for metering data management and transmission. In order to match the cost requirements for the water market, an original solution represented by a visual sensor is proposed as an add-on module for the smart meter. The adoption of developed electronic device and ad-hoc protocol at application layer within the last mile of a multiservice Advanced Metering Infrastructure is investigated in terms of energy issues and interoperability. This study also analyses the communication performance that can be expected when using wireless M-Bus technology to send DLMS/COSEM messages and complete an image file transmission from the smart meter to data concentrator unit.