Research And Design Of The Wireless Meter Reading Concentrator Based On ARM

In recent years the remote meter reading technology has aroused extensiveconcern in the community. Remote meter reading technology is a set of computertechnology, intelligent control technology, communication technology and embeddedtechnology in a multi-field and disciplinary cross-penetration results. It can be able tocentralize collecting energy data and operate the power terminal in long distance. Thetechnology solved many drawbacks of the traditional manual meter reading andachieved centralized data management, for example: not timely, the wrong copy andmissing of copy. It also laid a solid foundation for the development of informationtechnology in the electrical sector.Remote meter reading system can be divided into three levels:the lower level arecomposed of acquisitions and energy meters, the middle level are concentrators, thetop layer is the database server system. According to the actual situation this paperproposed one design and implementation of concentrator: the concentrator is based onARM9platform. Which is expand ZigBee wireless module and GPRS communicationmodule. The lower level of the system used the wireless connection way, witch cansolved a series of shortcomings of the field cabling, for example, complex structure,high cost, inconvenient expansion and maintain etc. The top level of the systemexchange of data through the GPRS network, which is stable and high real-time.Because the cost of GPRS communication accord to flow, the system can onlinealways when it is not used. So it is convenient for concentrator to transport the collectenergy data to the backend servers, meanwhile the master can easily to remote controlthe concentrator.In the meter reading system, the concentrator as a important bridge to connectthe backend server and the lower collector, which play the role of data and commandtransfer. On the one hand, it is transport the energy data to the top of electric industrymanagement department database and receive the control commands form the masterto the concentrator or energy meter. On the other hand, it is send collect datacommands to the collector.In this paper, the author firstly described the compositionand working principle of the meter reading system in general and then explained theoverall design and method of the meter reading system. Finally the design of theconcentrator from two main parts of hardware and software and introduces theworking principle and circuit design of each module in the hardware design. In systemsoftware design, start with the embedded Linux operating system migration, includedthe transplantation of Bootloader and kernel and production of root file system. Andthen from the overall structure of the application to the detailed design of the variousprogram modules, for example: cycle monitoring task, meter reading task and data communication task etc. Finally from the design ideas, working principle and flowchart to explain the various program modules.There is a ZigBee wireless network to connect the concentrator and collector,so the change of the collector node does not affect the stability of the system as awhole. The system hardware uses ARM9platform and combined with powerfulembedded Linux operating system, so the system has characteristics of stableperformance, wide application and easy expansion etc. Compare to the traditionalmeter reading system it has unparalleled advantages.