Author(s)

Athanasios Giannakopoulos, Panayotis G. Cottis

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece.

To implement the access and backhaul networks for Smart Metering (SM) systems various technologies are combined with the existing communications infrastructure. This paper deals with data transmission in SM systems, focusing on how the existing cellular networks infrastructure is employed to implement SM access communication networks. The analysis aims at analyzing the role of the cellular communications infrastructure taking into account the spatial distribution and installation points of the smart meters, the urban and topological characteristics of the SM deployment areas and the common practice so far followed by the utilities. It is demonstrated that cellular communications, either exclusively or combined with power line communications, enable immediate and scalable deployment of SM access communication networks at low installation cost, thus constituting the basic option for the implementation of smart metering.

Smart Metering (SM), SM Access Communication Networks, Cellular Communication Networks, Power Line Communications

Giannakopoulos, A. and Cottis, P. (2016) Exploiting the Cellular Infrastructure for Data Transmission in Smart Metering Systems. Journal of Computer and Communications, 4, 31-41. doi: 10.4236/jcc.2016.47005.