AMR domestic water meters

Question

I would like to pilot three DMAs with AMR domestic water meters for online meter reading and calculating the NRW. What would be best communication modules to transfer data to the server, (1) GPRS, (II) NB-IOT; and (iii) LoRA..................please inform me the best one with justifications.

Muhammad Alfalah Fauzi · Answer

Hello,
It depends on your location. Here is several experience between communication modules:
> Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN)
1. Radio Frequency (RF): 
- Needs good line of sight and typically ranging to max 100m in open area
- Typically to be installed above ground to avoid obstacles (sometimes it’s a security issue) => needs field test
- Antenna is typically embedded from the meter manufacturer and cannot be extended
- Offers automated collection (using hub/collector) or manual (using manpower to collect the data from distance) => needs cost & benefit analysis
2. LoRa:
- Needs good line of sight and typically ranging to max 1000m in open area
- Typically to be installed above ground to avoid obstacles (sometimes it’s a security issue) => needs field test
- Antenna is typically embedded from the meter manufacturer and cannot be extended
- Typically collected using centralized hub/collector, some telco companies in your region might develop collectors located in their comm. tower which offers coverage. However, a manual collection method like RF is also possible. => need field test and cost & benefit analysis.
3. NB-IoT:
- More robust in terms of coverage since it uses one of LTE band and the transmission behaves more or less same like smartphone (service and infrastructure are provided by telco companies), however the cost is rather expensive in terms of service data usage.
- Data might be limited to bandwidth capacity (uplink-downlink) of NB-IoT protocol.
 
> Conventional Transmission
GSM/GPRS:
- Conventional sending data using normal SIM Card and package data
- Requires heavy battery supply for communication, however quite robust since it uses same transmission bandwidth with normal smartphone (no data limitation).

Nick Preston · Answer

Hi, it totally depends on where you are: local call charges, local topography, density of buildings, height, your meter sizes, meter supplier, access to cable network, depth of meters, mounting of meters, other utility pick-up points, risk of theft, access to a suitable base station for LPR, 2G, 3G or 4G access, duration of your trial or real long-term roll-out, etc. This is not as straight forward as it at first appears - get it wrong and you'll have to start again.....

Jibok Chatterjee · Answer

General Packet Radio Service ( GPRS ) the mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM)....

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