A new frontier of smart metering, use case demonstration at Utility Week Paris

A2A SMART CITY AND CAVAGNA GROUP FOR DLMS OVER LoRaWAN®

A2A Smart City, Cavagna Group and Atlantica worked together on the real implementation of the DLMS over LoRaWAN® according with the directive coming from Semtech, LoRa Alliance and DLMS Association.

The product of this partnership became a demo to show how a gas meter can communicates using a DLMS messages on the LoRaWAN® stack. In this collaboration, A2A Smart City provided the knowledge of theLoRaWAN® protocol and the network infrastructure using its own LoRaWAN® network server, Cavagna Group based on the design of an ultrasonic static gas meter, that opened a new line of business in the company, has developed an extension of the radio stadio of the meter, to become compatible with  LoRaWAN® and has contributed developing the bridge layer between DLMS and LoRaWAN® stack, Atlantica provided the SAC compliant with the standard in order to guarantee  devices interchangeability. For the message fragmentation, waiting for the approving of SCHC_over_LoRaWAN® by the IETF, it was decided to use a first implementation of SCHC procedure.

This solution offers a complete application for implementation in a real scenario for smart metering and smart management. All the use cases necessary for a complete management of the meters is enabled by this architecture. Thanks to LoRaWAN® network, it is possible to enable a bidirectional communication to and from the devices from the application level.

This experience starts from the world of smart metering in the A2A Group. In the last years the number of gas smart meters in A2A grown significantly, exceeding one million units installed. The priority goal for A2A Smart City is to identify the most effective and efficent method to manage devices in general, such as meters in this use case, thanks to an innovative infrastructure deployed and ready to operate. The synergy with Cavagna Group meter manufacturer and the well-known Atlantica software experience, is a reference for the A2A Group architecture.

Starting from the priority to increase the percentage of AMR devices connected, A2A Smart City suggested the adoption of LoRaWAN® technologies to test and propose an alternative method to reach the desired level of AMR coverage.

Based on the water meter and smart city services experience, the natural gas use case seems perfect for for the #LoRaWAN® technology.