Performance Analysis of Advanced Metering Infrastructure with Multihop Hybrid Communication System

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) has been attracting considerable attention for effective use of energy. In the system, smart meters installed in houses, factories, and other buildings automatically and periodically measure power consumption data and transmit them to electric power companies, which enables real-time monitoring and power demand control. If the transmission bandwidth allocated to AMI is more than the necessary capacity for periodical collection of power consumption data, other types of communication such as gas and water consumption data collection, demand response for electricity, and inquiries to electric power companies can be conducted by using surplus bandwidth. Multihop wireless networks will be adopted as an FAN (Field Area Network) for communication via smart meters, and it is important to discuss the optimal network topology in order to improve communication performance. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model of AMI taking multihop topology into consideration, and investigate the impact of the configuration of network topology on performance measures.