Overview
What is Smart Water Metering?
With rapidly increasing urbanization and water scarcity, smart water metering with leak and tampering detection allows utilities, cities, and municipalities to deliver water as efficiently as possible while minimizing waste. Smart water meters measure the quantity of water consumed in residential, commercial, and industrial applications. Leak detectors detect anomalies in consumption to identify potential water leakage. All monitoring data is collected wirelessly since Smart water meters are battery-powered devices using wireless low-power connectivity with long reach.
Benefits of Smart Water Metering
Smart water metering allows utilities, cities, and municipalities to efficiently balance the demand and supply of water, reduce costs, and contribute to sustainability requirements. Smart meters automate and help reduce water loss, such as leaks, throughout the entire water distribution network. Utility companies can automatically invoice consumption without manual meter reading. Transparency in the process improves customer satisfaction and helps customers save water.
Our Solutions for Smart Electricity Meters
Silicon Labs provides complete wireless and lower-power processing solutions ideally suited for smart water metering designs. Our broad portfolio includes industry-leading chipsets and modules, innovative wireless software, and the most robust security, including the world's first SoCs (System on Chip) with the PSA Level 3 certification.
Key Product Development Considerations in Smart Water Metering
Extending Battery Life for Smart Water Meters
Power consumption is a crucial design consideration in smart water metering – long battery life avoids replacements and reduces utilities’ maintenance costs. Silicon Labs’ ingenious ultra-low power SoC design and Low Duty Cycle optimization can enable smart water meters with tens of years of operational life with a battery.
Choosing the Optimal Network Topology and Protocol
When choosing the optimal network topology and protocol for smart water metering solutions, you can choose between multiple alternatives based on business models, service providers, and regions. With Silicon Labs, you can find a hardware and software solution for all scenarios - e.g., Proprietary wireless protocol and Wi-SUN mesh.
Smart Water Meters and Wireless Performance
An extensive wireless reach and high reliability of connectivity are critical decision criteria for water utilities. Smart water meters are typically installed at sites with challenging radio conditions. Silicon Labs provides you with sub-GHz Wi-SUN mesh and Proprietary wireless protocols, maximizing the reach on your devices. Our wireless SoCs and modules are renowned for their superior RF performance, increasing reliability, and maintaining full connectivity at all locations.
Security
Given the impact if a smart meter device were to be hacked, security should be a key design consideration. Silicon Labs hardware and software feature robust security to safeguard your smart metering devices against the most sophisticated logical, physical, and wireless attacks. Our PSA Certified Level 3 certified Secure Vault firmware is the first in the world to bring this extreme protection on wireless SoCs and modules.
Minimizing BoM Costs
Reducing product costs via an optimized Bill of Material (BoM) is a key consideration for most smart metering product developers. Silicon Labs SoCs combine a 32bit MCU with a high-performance RF radio and security enabling device makers to reduce the number of components in the design, reducing Bill of Material costs.
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