A wireless mesh communication protocol for smart-metering

Worldwide there has been increasing interest over the past few years for so-called “Smart Meters”, in academia, governments and in industry. Such smart-metering systems need a way to communicate the collected data reliably and cost efficiently to the back-office for analysis. Several competing technologies exist and are in use world-wide. Mesh-networks have been the winning technology in the USA and Australia for the past two years, and are gaining interest in Europe at the moment due to its reduced costs and increased reliability. In this paper we present and evaluate a real-life implementation of a new routing protocol for use in smart-metering mesh-network grids. The routing protocol we present is designed with both technological constraints and legislative requirements as posed by the application area in mind. Our evaluation of the protocol is based on real-world experience and data collected from real-world devices, in combination with simulation studies of the protocol. Our evaluation shows that the protocol is a robust, reliable solution for communicating collected data in difficult scenarios, showing great resilience against both bit-errors and node-failures.