Wireless M-Bus sensor nodes in smart water grids: The energy issue

Smart Metering is one of the key issues in modern energy efficiency technologies. Several efforts have been recently made in developing suitable communication protocols for metering data management and transmission, and the Metering-Bus (M-Bus) is a relevant standard example, with a wide diffusion in the European market. This paper deals with its wireless evolution, namely Wireless M-Bus (WM-Bus), and in particular looks at it from the energy consumption perspective. Indeed, specially in those applicative scenarios where the grid powering is not available, like in water and gas metering settings, it is fundamental to guarantee the sustainability of the meter itself, by means of long-life batteries or suitable energy harvesting technologies. The present work analyzes all these aspects directly referring to a specific HW/SW implementation of the WM-Bus variants, providing some useful guidelines for its application in the smart water grid context.