Wireless communication protocols for smart metering applications in power distribution networks

In the last two decades, smart metering has attracted more attentions. Distribution utilities are replacing mechanical meters with smart ones and traditional meter reading is being replaced with the new smart metering approaches. Communication technology plays an important role to provide a fast, reliable and secure smart metering system. Variety of communication protocols exist for smart metering. In this paper, different wireless communication protocols are compared and two individual scenarios based on wireless protocols are presented. Scenario 1 is combination of WiFi and Wimax protocols and scenario 2 is combination of Whitefi and Bluetooth protocols.