Techno economic analysis, design and implement a suitable communication method for utility systems

This thesis presents a research work which is carried out to optimize the Zigbee based remote meter reading network. There are various technologies available to automate the meter reading such as PLC, GSM, Optical fibre and RF technologies. As far as utilities providers are concerned, their focus is on a reliable RMR system to read the meter at minimum possible cost. The development of a reliable RMR system is highly dependent on telecommunication infrastructure which is costly if GPRS is used as a way of communication. Therefore, research were done in depth to analyse the cost and function of RMR system as large number of sensors are used in the electrical utility. This particular research is on data concentrator based RMR system focusing on the analysing of communication delay and resource optimization. In this research Matlab Simulink software was used for simulations and Visual Studio C# is used for creating the software. Several simulations were carried out in this research, for simulating communication speed, communication path and study the behaviour with the presence of noises. As the final outcome of the research, software was developed for selecting Zigbee power rating based on GPS locations and generated algorithms for calculating communication delay and path which can be incorporated to the coordinator