Wi-SUN is a worldwide proven and accepted technology applicable to several sectors and mainly to the smart grid and smart metering sectors.
The Wi-SUN Alliance has defined the Field Area Network (FAN) technical profile specification. This profile is applicable to city developers, utilities, meter and service providers, integrators to interconnect devices onto a single network, in support of applications like advanced metering infrastructure, distribution automation and others.
As the smart metering and smart grid concern, the FAN profile is the master key in the design of equipment. Andrea Informatique has been working since long in the smart metering and smart grid sectors and has developed its own solutions for Power Line Communications and Radio Frequency. In this context, it was normal in Andrea’s strategy, to design and implement a Wi-SUN soft solution.
Presently, Andrea Informatique has successfully achieved Hurricane, our Wi-SUN soft modem solution. Hurricane is based on the Wi-SUN FAN technology. Hurricane is a soft modem having an excellent business model. Indeed, the entire stack runs on the application microcontroller and needs only the radio transceiver.
Hurricane is a hardware reference design and a compact and smart library running in the application microcontroller. This approach has big advantages; to reduce the complexity during the hardware device design, to facilitate the maintenance (firmware upgrade), to get a big flexibility to move the solution to other microcontrollers, to have a better control of the firmware of the device, etc.
Hurricane is showing its adaptability to the market; indeed, the market is imposing new rules with heavy constraints and forces all actors to review their strategies to optimize costs. Hurricane is contributing in this strategy.
The stack overview of Wi-SUN FAN is illustrated in Figure. The PHY layer is based on IEEE 802.15.4g, which provides bi-directional communication with high data rate (up to 300kbps) and low latency.
The MAC sub-layer is based on IEEE 802.15.4e. The network layer is IPv6 with 6LoWPAN adaptation. In the application layer DLMS COSEM is presented as an example in the smart metering sector. Talks between the DLMS UA and the Wi-SUN alliance are now in progress to create the most adapted profile for covering metering requirements.
Andrea is member of the Wi-SUN Alliance
DLMS COSEM Tools & Services are a complete package of products and support to improve the reliability and to reduce project development time, and in consequence, to reduce the costs of your Smart Metering Projects.
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