WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM FOR ENERGY METER READING

Transcription

1 WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM FOR ENERGY METER READING Ms. Samidha S Virkud 1, Ms.Aishwarya Misal 2 and Mr.Dinesh R Kadam 3 1,2,3 Electronics and Telecomm, A C Patil college of engineering Abstract- Energy meter reading is a tedious and an expensive affair. The meter reader has to go and take the reading manually to issue the bill, which will later be entered in the software to automate the billing and payment system. It would have reduced the laborious task and financial wastage if can automate the manual meter reading process and bill data entry process. This paper proposes a new network communication system for energy meter reading by integrating communication technology and software system along with the existing meters. A wireless or wired communication system will be integrated with electronic energy meter to have remote access over the usage of electricity. Even though they are two different modules, energy meter deliver the reading details as on when it demands by the communication system. The communication system is further connected with electricity regional/subregional office, which will rather act as a base station. Instead of creating a separate communication system and backbone, any of the secure existing communication service infrastructures may also be utilized to avoid any initial investments. The communication channel is identified by the consumer s number and it is secured by any cryptographic standards. Base office can verify the energy meters performance by checking the day to day consumption of energy. This will also help to avoid any tampering or break down of energy meter. Keywords-Energy Meter Reading, Energy Calculation, Power Measurement, Wireless Communication I. INTRODUCTION Even after closing all the doors of thefting and tampering of the electricity by taking number of measures such as introduction of electronic meters, the cost of electricity is still rising. This is due to the lack of professionalism in handling the distribution and measuring system and generous administrative expenses. Present energy meter reading is a tedious and an expensive affair as a number of meter readers has to go and take the reading manually (from the consumer s house) to issue the bill, which will later be entered in the software to automate the billing and payment system. Moreover the chance of tampering the reading details and not reporting the theft attempts are very common. Another major disadvantage with the existing system is, that if one electronic energy meter breaks down, the office will come to know only after two or even more months depending on the liability of the person who is going to take the reading of consumer, to repair or replace the damaged meter. This paper proposes a network communication system for energy meter reading by integrating communication technology and software system with the existing meters, which is expected to reduce both electricity measuring and administrative expense drasticity. Wired or wireless communication system will be integrated with Electronic Energy Meter (EEM) to measure the usage of electricity remotely even from the office. Even though they are two different modules, energy meter delivers the reading details as on when demanded by the communication system. The communication system is further connected with electricity regional/sub-regional office, which will rather act as a base station to measure the supply of electricity even without the intervention of meter reader. Instead of creating a separate communication system and backbone, any of the secure existing communication service infrastructures may also be utilized to reduce any overhead expense that comes in installing the proposed system. The communication channel is identified by the consumer s number and it is secured DOI: /IJMTER MOQUL 139

2 by any encryption standards. At any time base office can verify the energy meters performance by checking the day to day consumption of energy so as to avoid any tampering or break down of energy meter. II. PROPOSED SYSTEM Proposed system is illustrated in the Figure 1, which has three main modules, Consumer s Automatic Electronic Energy Meter (AEEM), Communication System, and a Base Station. Before elaborating further on the proposed protocol, the notations used in this model are defined below. AEEM are used to measure the supply or usage of the electricity. The EEM is embedded with Automatic Communication Device (ACD), which can be relying on both wired and/or wireless technology. Since AEEM is a combination of two independent modules, breakdown of one will not affect the working of other. If the energy meter breaks down, no signal will be received by ACD, and this error will be reported to the base station; and if ACD breaks down, no signal will be received by the base station, and their software will report for urgent repair. AEEM is identified by its unique consumer s number. At a time ACD will be in any one of the active/idle/sleep mode. ACD is empowered with a Lithium battery to have an uninterrupted service and for a specific time (say 10:00 AM to 04:00 PM) to increase the life time of the device. During the idle mode almost 70%of the components will be in working mode. After the stipulated time, the device will go to sleep mode where almost 90% of the components are not in the working state. Figure 2 shows the state diagram of AEEM. Base station is the place where all the AEEM are controlled with the help of software; this paper calls it as EMC Figure 1. Proposed Communication System Energy Meter Controller (EMC). Every day EMC will take the reading with the help of AEEM and store the information in their database. Monthly or bimonthly bill will be generated automatically as the parameters are set. Entire or part of operating system or software or parameters can set from the EMC room itself. The authorized persons can take the list of repair list and tamper black list, so as to take necessary actions to avoid any further loss or theft of electricity. If standing instructions, credit/debit card or any prepaid scheme is integrated with EMC, queue in front of bill payment section can also be avoided. Typical transmission system is shown in Figure (3). Communication systems are the backbone used by the base station and AEEM to send and receive messages/requests. Backbone such as any of wired (optical/cable) or wireless (GSM/CDMA/other 3G protocols) or both can be used. A. CID: Consumer s Identification is a unique number to identify the AEEM. All the communication and other messages are identified by using this identification All rights Reserved 140

3 Figure 2. State Diagram B. KB: Private of the base station. Consumers and base station has got a private key generated by trusted authorities of base station. The private key of the consumer will be embedded in the AEEM as on when it is installed in a reprogrammable manner. That is consumer cannot separate or squeeze out the private key from their device. But AEEMs will be able use this private key for any secure transaction. Typical transmission system C. Cert KB(CID): The digital certificate issued by base station to the consumer based on CID and base station s private key. D. ESB(R): The report R is encrypted using private key of B, SB E. ACK: Acknowledgement is sent while receiving the message/report. When it comes to the communication to control or manage the proposed system, mainly four situations arises which needs special attention. (1) Daily Report: This is a report regarding the usage of electricity by a consumer. If no responds from the AEEM, EMC will come to a conclusion that the ACD is not functioning properly and it requires urgent attention. Figure 4 (a) shows the transaction details for generating daily report. Upon receiving the request for daily report, AEEM will send an encrypted message, ESB(R), and a digital certificate issued by base station, B, when parameters are set in ACP. If B is able to decrypt the report successfully, then ACK will send. EMC Figure 3. Typical Transmission All rights Reserved 141

4 Figure 4. Comm. b/w AEEM & EMC (2) Tampering: when anyone tries to intrude, by breaking the hardware or software of AEEM, a tempering message will be send by encrypting using the AEEM s private key, along with their digital signature. Figure 4 (b) shows the transaction details. If B is able to decrypt successfully, corresponding CID will be reported and placed in the black list and ACK will be send. (3) Change of Parameters: Specifically predefined parameters in the AEEM can be changed (set or reset) by EMC, for the updating and smooth running of AEEM. Encryption techniques are used to ensure the security of the communication. (4) In the AEEM, three kinds of software s are used. (a) System Initialization of Software (SIS), which is the basic system level software that will run all the time (even during the sleep mode) requires very less resources (say 50%), which cannot be reinstalled from the EMC Figure 5. Comm. b/w AEEM, AECP & EMC b) Operating system (OS) in the AEEM in designed to run with the available restricted resources and can be reinstalled from EMC with the help of SIS. (c) Control Software (CS) can be installed or uninstalled with the help of OS, which actually encrypts/decrypts or sending/ receiving the reports from EEM and so on. EMC can set / reset the parameters in the CS. Figure (5) shows the communication between AEEM, AECP, and EMC III. CONCLUSION This paper proposed a theoretical model of an efficient and secure Network Communication System for Energy Meter Reading problems. Since all the doors are closed to avoid any possible tampering, present loss of electricity problem will considerably reduce. More over the overhead expense for meter reading will be almost nil, when the Automatic Electronic Energy Meter is introduced. The encrypted secure communication will restrict the theft and tampering of energy meter. The security of this system lies on the security and robustness of the encryption standard and different All rights Reserved 142

5 permutation and combination functions used in encryption algorithm, which can further be modified and developed to improve the efficiency of the protocol. IV. REFERENCES [1] O. Homa Kesav and B. Abdul Rahim, Automated Wireless Meter Reading System for Monitoring and Controlling Power Consumption International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering Volume- 1, Issue- 2, June [2] L. Prashanthi and K. V. Prasad, Wireless power meter monitoring with power theft detection and intimation system using GSM and Zigbee networks Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering Volume 9, Issue 6, Ver. I ( Nov - Dec ). [3] Ashna. K and Sudhish N George, GSM Based Automatic Energy Meter Reading System with Instant Billing This project was supported and financed by National Institute of Technology, Calicut, IEEE All rights Reserved 143