Automatic Meter-Reading Simulation through Power Line Communication

This paper proposes a simulation's architecture that allows for the analysis of the performance when using the Power Line Communication's technology. In concrete, it studies the viability of PRIME' standard, to send Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) messages through a low voltage network. In contrast with other studies, physical phenomena -such as background and impulsive noise sources, channel attenuation and multipath effect-are taken into account by Matlab simulations. Additionally, OMNeT++ network simulator is used to model the telematic effects that occur in the communication process. As an example of the kind of output that can be obtained by the proposed architecture, the paper analyses the end-to-end's performance at application layer in terms of round-trip latency. Several simulations are performed in a European low-voltage network topology to compute the number of meters that can be polled within 15 minutes. Additionally, one experiment tries to determine the optimal position of one of the key nodes in PRIME's networks: the SWITCH node.