title: EMMNet: sensor networking for electricity meter monitoring.
abstract: Smart sensors are emerging as a promising technology for a large number of application domains. This paper presents a collection of requirements and guidelines that serve as a basis for a general smart sensor architecture to monitor electricity meters. It also presents an electricity meter monitoring network, named EMMNet, comprised of data collectors, data concentrators, hand-held devices, a centralized server, and clients. EMMNet provides long-distance communication capabilities, which make it suitable suitable for complex urban environments. In addition, the operational cost of EMMNet is low, compared with other existing remote meter monitoring systems based on GPRS. A new dynamic tree protocol based on the application requirements which can significantly improve the reliability of the network is also proposed. We are currently conducting tests on five networks and investigating network problems for further improvements. Evaluation results indicate that EMMNet enhances the efficiency and accuracy in the reading, recording, and calibration of electricity meters.
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230027, China. ztlin@mail.ustc.edu.cn
authors.forename: Zhi-Ting
authors.initials: ZT
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Yu-Sheng
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.forename: Bao-Hua
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Yu-Gui
authors.initials: YG
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.forename: Xu-Dong
authors.initials: XD
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Xiu-Fang
authors.initials: XF
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D004560:Electricity; D013686:Telemetry / Q000295:instrumentation*