Determining location of appliances from multi-hop tree structures of power strip type smart meters

Recently, energy management has become one of the emerging services in the area of residential network service. A smart meter is the most essential component of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) that connects the home energy management system of individual residences and a smart grid that optimizes the production, distribution, and consumption of electric power. Power strip type smart meters can be used to not only monitor but also control the electric power consumption at individual power outlet ports in the power outlet directly. They can be used to control and effectively reduce standby power consumption by the application of the direct power supply control. A smart multi-power tap (SMPT) is an advanced multi-outlet power strip type smart meter that provides important contextual information such as the identity and location of electric home appliances on the basis of the temporal power consumption data and the control of power supply to the appliances. However, the SMPT cannot be used to determine the location of appliances when the connections among SMPTs form a tree structure. In this study, we develop a mathematical model of cascade connections among SMPTs and propose a solution for obtaining the location information of the tree structure. The proposed method helps realize real applications of the SMPT for providing activity-based context-aware home network services and energy management services.