Wireless Meter Reading System Based On Mesh Network

Meter reading systems are broadly employed in nowadays, with a wide range of sorts such as cable meter reading system and infrared meter reading system. Compared with manual meter reading system, the cable meter reading system and infrared meter reading system are more efficient and reliable. However, the cable meter reading system has some disadvantages, the circuit is complex and it is hard for debugging and maintenance, the circuit aging quickly if the system is installed in the outdoor which can cause short-circuit and disconnected. Due to the limited communication distance of the infrared meter reading system, the workers have to collect the data corridor by corridor which means huge workload. To overcome the disadvantages of the cable meter reading system and infrared meter reading system, we design a wireless meter reading system based on Mesh network in this paper. The new meter reading scheme proposed can be employed to update the cable/infrared meter reading system with little cost, and therefore reduce the workload in circuit maintenance and meter reading significantly. The main contributions of this paper are as follow:1. A wireless data transmission solution based on Zigbee data transmission and low-cost single-chip upsd3233 is proposed. We analyze the principle and mechanism of the Zigbee device used in the area meter reading system, design and realize the connection of XBEE module and connection circuit of the external data.2. A variety of communication mechanisms are provided by using the upsd3233 to control the XBEE module flexibly. Measures are taken to amend the shortcoming of the establishment of Zigbee network based on Mesh network. A command based user-machine interface is realized to set parameters, debug devices and test networks.3. We propose a set of communication mechanisms and rules fitting for area wireless meter reading system based on the Mesh network: the flexible use of automated response, broadcast and specified address data transmission. Based on the transparent data transfer mechanisms, the cable/infrared meter reading system can be easily updated to wireless meter reading system.We debug the Mesh wireless meter reading system in the lab, test it in the residential areas for a long time and then improve and prefect the system in the application. The system now works stably and has a good compatibility for the cable/infrared network. The Mesh wireless meter reading system meets the design requirements and has broad prospects for future applications.