Universal Gateway for Metering Applications

There are many opportunities for developing innovative solutions based on the IoT technological framework. One of the closest and developing fields of application is the Metering sector. There are water, electricity, gas, and heat energy meters. The protocols used are multiple among them, MDLC, 60870-102, M-BUS, Modbus, etc.

These protocols are mostly protocols for horizontal communications between field devices, not being applicable for vertical communications between devices and control, supervision, and billing systems.

The need arises to communicate a multitude of energy meters with the control, supervision, and billing applications. It is necessary to be able to collect all the information and put it in the “cloud” reliably and securely.

The meters can communicate using Rs232 or Rs485 serial communications, infrared, radio, Ethernet, etc. These meters can be isolated or can be grouped geographically in buildings, neighborhoods, polygons, etc.

Different communication networks can solve the concentration of information from several meters, for subsequent sending to the “cloud.” Several technologies offer solutions that do not solve all the cases. SIGFOX, LORA, GSM/GPRS, ZigBee networks, ISM radio modems, MESH meshed networks, Wifi, Wimax, etc, etc, etc.

A universal solution for Metering should implement the two levels of communication. On the one hand, the communication level with the field devices, meters, and on the other hand, implement the communications with the “cloud” Ethernet, Wifi, Wimax, GPRS/3G/4G, Tetra.

A universal solution for Metering applications “Universal Gateway” should be a remote device capable of implementing multiple communication protocols, cyber-secure by default, and with industrial specifications that allow its use in difficult environments.