Simulation of a Smart Water Metering Network in Tsumeb East, Namibia

A Smart Water Metering Network (SWMN), consists of smart water meters deployed at the customer's premises, and Data Acquisition Points (DAPs) that receive and transmit data from the water meters to the data processing center. SWMNs have a lot of advantages over traditional water meters such as increased data accuracy and huge savings. In this paper, a simulation model for the Tsumeb East area has been developed and tested under different conditions of dead meters and idle meters using the Linklayer model in TOSSIM. Furthermore, two sink placement mechanisms, distance based mechanism and meter density based mechanisms where used to place the Data Acquisition Points (DAPS) in the network. The Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) was used as the performance metric. We discuss our results and explain the findings in the networks' performance. The results and their explanation can be used to create an awareness of the adoption of SMWNs amongst water utilities, companies, government and other stake holders.