1
Design of a Wireless ARM-Based Automatic
Meter Reading and Control System
Chih-Hung Wu, Shun-Chien Chang and Yu-Wei Huang
Abstract-- This paper implements a wireless ARM-based
automatic meter reading and control system (WAMRCS) for
distribution automation. The WAMRCS is designed based on a
32-bit ARM microprocessor to deal with power data processing
and relay control. In order to provide a cost-effective, wireless,
always-connected, two-way data link between utility company
and WAMRCS, the WAMRCS sends information of utility
usage, power quality and outage alarm to utility company via
GPRS network. Compared with analog utility meter reading by
manpower, WAMRCS is more accurate, reliable, cost-effective,
quick and free from man-made errors. It can provide extra
capabilities such as distribution automation, load management
and time-of-use rate.
Index Terms—ARM-Based System, Automatic Meter
Reading, GPRS, Relay Control.
I. INTRODUCTION
W ith the rapid growth of population and technology, the
electric power consumption and number of utility-
consumers had increased quickly. In order to serve larger
utility-consumers, utility company needs to employee more
reading-meter workers. During the process of reading meter
and writing down utility usage on record table by workers,
man-made errors often happened. Therefore utility company
spent cost and manpower to correct these errors for utility-
consumers. Otherwise it is uneconomical for utility company
to dispatch workers to record utility usage on utility-
consumers-scattered wide area.
Some utility-consumers as technology factories care about
quality of power supply, but analog power meter can’t give
enough information about power quality. When the power
supply is unstable or outage occurs to utility-consumers, how
the utility company knows the above status and then clears
power faults quickly to decrease the utility-consumers’ loss.
It’s an important point to research.
At present there are more and more studies applying two-
way communication technologies on distribution
automation[1]-[4]. Theses technologies can send a lot of
Chih-Hung Wu is Lecture of Department of Electrical Engineering, Chien
Kuo Institute of Technology, R.O.C. (e-mail: zhwu@cc.ckit.edu.tw).
Shun-Chien Chang is with Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Chang-Hua University of Education, R.O.C. (e-mail:
boboffice@pchome.com.tw).
Yu-Wei Huang is Professor of Department of Electrical Engineering,
National Chang-Hua University of Education, R.O.C. (e-mail:
huangyw@cc.ncue.edu.tw).
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power parameters and control signal to reach the goal of load
management and power demand control. Using automatic
system of reading meter on distribution automation can
supply many capabilities such as efficient meter-reading,
distribution, power monitoring and control, load management
and time-of-use rate. Supplying above capabilities is a
development tendency to promote service quality for utility-
consumers and improve the management efficiency for utility
company in the future.
In the past, most automated meter reading (AMR) were
generally based on such media as power line carrier
communication (PLC), radio frequency (RF), telephone line
and network to send data [5]-[7]. The above communication
media fact some problems such as transmission distance,
transmission cost, maintenance and security of data
transmission. In order to solve these problems, we can
consider applying mobile communication system GPRS
(General Packet Radio Service), which is popularly used in
the world, to send power data.
With rapid growth of internet and mobile communication
network, future application service will gradually concentrate
on data transmission service. GPRS has been developed
maturely and has many practical applications at present [8]-
[12]. It has many advantages such as always on-line, high-
speed transmission and charged fee according to the amount
of transmitted data. It can satisfy the need of sending power
parameters on automatic system of reading digital meter.
Therefore, GPRS system can build outdoor, mobile, wide-
range and Multipoint-to-Multipoint data transmission channel
and satisfy the need of data transmission speed for automatic
system of reading digital meter.
Under considerations to regional surroundings, laws and
regulations, communication efficiency, interference and
transmission cost, this study proposes a wireless ARM-based
automatic meter reading and control system (WAMRCS). The
WAMRCS uses sampling circuit and A/D converter to
transfer analog signal of voltage and current into digital data.
The digital data then is send to embedded system to compute
power parameters. This embedded system will send power
parameters to regional monitoring and control center of utility
company via GPRS module connected with it. This
WAMRCS applied on distribution automation can save
personnel expense of hiring reading-meter workers and can be
free from human involvement; moreover, it can save large
manpower from keying utility usage into database.
 2

II. WAMRCS SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
The hardware architecture and appearance of system are
shown as Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. We use PT and CT to measure the
analog signal of voltage and current. The analog signal is
sampled by sample-and-hold circuit and transferred into
digital data by A/D converter. The digital data then is sent to
ARM-based embedded system to compute power parameters.
This embedded system communicates with regional center of
utility company for reporting power parameters and status
periodically via GPRS module connected with it. The UPS is
used to provide stable power supply for the embedded system
and backup power to prevent from short-term outage.
The WAMRCS can be divided into five parts, these five
parts separately are signal sampling unit(SSU), relay control
unit(RCU), ARM-based embedded system(AES), wireless
communication module(WCM) and utility control center
(UCC). The hardware description of five parts is introduced
as follows.
A. SSU
The analog signal scale of voltage and current on the
primary is proportionally transformed on the secondary via
PT and CT transformers. The SSU uses sample-and-hold
circuit to quickly store the instantaneous amplitude of a
sampled input signal, and then to hold that amplitude until the
next sampling pulse. During the hold time, the sampled
voltage or current would be chosen alternately by multiplexer
and then converted into an equivalent digital signal by the
A/D converter.
B. RCU
The RCU is an interrupting device designed for fault
interruption and load switching. In order to protect the D/A
converter from exceeding current, the D/A converter is
connected with protective relay wired in series with the
breaker control circuit, so the breaker could be controlled.
C. AES
Traditional power measure instruments, like watt hour
meter and reactive power meter, cannot supply enough
information about power quality. In order to acquire RMS
value of voltage and current, power factor, real power,
reactive power and apparent power, more and more designers
use microprocessor to design digital reading meters. The
microprocessor-based digital power meters have been
available in the laboratory and on the market in the recent
years[5]-[7],[13],[14]. The ARM-based system occupies
small space. It support most popular communication protocols
and its capabilities are more powerful than 8051 chip. The
ARM-based system has been widely used in a variety of
network equipments, such as mobile phone and PDA, and
become popular and cheaper at present. The ARM-based
embedded system has a simple operation system, so
programmer can use popular c language to design program.

Communication
Network R S T
Wireless
Communication Power
UPS
Module(WCM) Adapter

Power
Relay Control
GPRS Connector Unit(RCU)
Network RS-232 RS-232 Breaker
D/A Protective
Control Breaker
Converter Relay
Circuit

GGSN Watch
Gateway Dog
ARM
Microprocessor Real-Time
Internet Clock Sample
and Hold CT
Circuit

Flash SDRAM A/D Multiplexer

Converter Sample
and Hold
ARM-based Embedded Circuit
System(AES)
PT

Utility
Database
Signal Sampling
Server Unit(SSU)

dot-matrix
Utility Consumer
printer

Utility Control Center

(UCC)

Fig. 1. System Hardware Architecture

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Fig. 2. Appearance of WAMRCS
This study adopts NET-Start embedded system produced
by WISCORE Corporation to design WAMRCS. The
specifications and capabilities of NET-Start embedded system
are described as follows [15]:
(1) It is designed based on a low power 32-bit
ARM7TDMITM network processor called
"S3C4510TM". S3C4510TM is a high performance and
low cost solution for network applications.
(2) S3C4510TM includes 8-kbyte cache/SRAM, and RS-232
serial interface, two UARTs, two timers, 18
programmable I/O ports, and a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet
controller. The on chip features can significantly reduce
the total system cost to design network devices.
(3) The NET-Start embedded system has 2 MB flash ROM
and 16 MB SDRAM on board, so it can execute longer
programming code and has larger RAM to store more
data.
Fig. 3. Function Blocks Diagram of AES Software
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3
D. WCM
The WAMRCS adopts MC35 Terminal GPRS module
produced by Siemens Corporation as wireless communication
module. This universally usable GPRS module supports both
the GSM 900 and the GSM 1800 networks. It has high speed
of wireless voice and data transmission. The MC35 Terminal
GPRS module offers class 8 GPRS data communication in
addition to classic GSM services and mobile internet access
achieves a performance level previously only available in
fixed networks. It can be integrated simply via standard RS-
232 interfaces[16].
E. UCC
The UCC resides in the utility company and has a PC as
control server with needed programs and storage to read and
collect power parameters from AES via communication
network. The specifications of server are as follows:
2.4 GHz Intel Pentium III processor
512 Megabytes RAM
80 Gigabyte Hard Disk
15" LCD Monitor
DVD-Rom Drive
Floppy Disk Drive
100 Mbps. Network Connection
Dot-matrix printer
III. AES SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
The function blocks diagram of AES software is shown as
Fig. 3. The functions of AES software are measurements
acquisition, relay control, tamper detection, AES setup, power
parameters computation and database management. The AES
software runs under the µClinux operation system.
 4

A. µClinux operation system Apparent power : VA = V rms × I rms

On the aspect of WAMRCS software, the Net-Start
Watt
embedded system uses µClinux as operating system core. Power factor : cos θ =
Developer can use c-language to program software and build VA
it as executive file on personal computer beforehand. This
executive file will be loaded into microprocessor of embedded Reactive power : Var = (VA) − (Watt )
2 2

system through RS-232 from PC and runs under µClinux

operating system. C. Data fields in AES database
The characteristics of µClinux are introduced as follows The data fields in AES database are summarized as table 1.
[17]: These fields can be remotely modified by UCC after login
(1) µClinux is a derivative of Linux 2.0 kernel intended for identification of accessing AES is confirmed.
microcontrollers without Memory Management Units
(MMUs). TABLE I
(2) The source code is open and designed as module mode. AES DATABASE SUMMARY
(3) µClinux kernel is much smaller than the original Linux
Number
2.0 kernel, while retaining the main advantages of the Field
of bytes
Comment
linux operating system: stability, superior network AES ID 2 Device ID
capability, and excellent file system support. AES IP 4 AES IP address
(4) µClinux supports numerous popular networking Account 10 Login account
protocols. It is an internet-ready OS perfect for embedded Password 20 Login password
systems. UCC IP 4 UCC Ip address
In addition, when we develop a program, it’s necessary to Communication port with
UCC Port 4
UCC
notice the following items:
Voltage and Current
(1) Because the µClinux doesn’t support MMU function, we Sampling Time 4
ampling time setup
cannot use the capability of virtual memory on program Period of sending power
Report Time 4
design. data to UCC
(2) When alarm happened during the process of compiling Relay Output Status 1
program, we must solve any errors or problems. VR 4 R phase voltage
VS 4 S phase voltage
(3) If the program can run on PC without any error, it doesn’t
VT 4 T phase voltage
mean that the program also can run on the embedded
IR 4 R phase current
system Net-Start properly. IS 4 S phase current
B. Computation of static power parameters IT 4 T phase current
Real power 4
After transferring analog measurements into digital Reactive power 4
measurements, we can use the following equations to compute Apparent power 4
static power parameters. Power factor 2
1) Root Mean Square (RMS)
If N sampled data V1, V2, V3, …, VN during a period are
D. tamper detection
acquired, the RMS value of voltage V is given by
In recent years many utility consumers attempt to obtain
N
1
∑v electrical energy illegally. This incoming loss of stolen power
2
vrms = N k =1
k for utility companies in china is even more than 2416 million
$USD. It’s necessary for utility meter to have the capability of
where Vk represents the Kth sampling value of voltage.
tamper detection. This study uses a method of tamper
If N sampled data I1, I2, I3, …, IN during a period are
detection proposed by Misra, R.B. and Patra, S. [18]. The
acquired, the RMS value of current I is given by
following events are considered for tamper detection by the
I rms
=
1 N
N k =1 I k
∑ 2
method.
Missing potential event
where Ik represents the Kth sampling value of current. Current unbalance event
2) Power Current reversal event
If N samples of voltage signal V1, V2, V3, …, VN and If any above event occurs, the AES will record the meter
current signal I1, I2, I3, …, IN during a period are acquired at status in database and inform UCC about tamper warning on
the same sampling instants, the real power is given by the instant.
Watt =
1 N
∑
N k =1 V k I k IV. UCC SERVER SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
The values of reactive power, power factor and apparent The UCC not only reads and collects power parameters
power can be given from the following equations. from AES, but also gives relay-control commands to AES via

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communication network. The communication media between
UCC and AES is two-way. The main capabilities of UCC are
as follows.
Power data acquisition center
RCU breaker control
AES setup and modification
Combination with the utility billing system
The function blocks diagram of UCC server software is
shown as Fig. 4. The functions of server software are UCC
management, AES relay control, tamper Detection
management, user account management, graph of consumer
utility usage and report print. The software of server system
adopts VB as programming language and SQL server as
database manager. The server system runs under windows
2000 server.
V. SECURITY OF WAMRCS
The AES adopts TCP/IP protocol to communicate with
UCC via communication network, so the transmission data
between AES and UCC may be intercepted and received by
hackers in Internet. Meanwhile, the AES is a network device
seen as a network point in Internet, anyone can access AES
from anywhere. It’s an important point to prevent the AES
database from unauthorized access and modifications. This
study takes some security strategies to protect AES database
from hacker invasion and transmission data from interception.
These security strategies are listed as follows.
Login identification
Windows 2000 Server
(VB language)
AES Tamper
AES
Relay Detection
Management
Control Management
GPRS Communication
Fig. 4. Function Blocks Diagram of UCC Server Software
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5
Account and password encryption
Lock AES and UCC IP address as source and
destination IP address
Transmission data and control commands encryption
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
(1) This research uses a sampling circuit to get voltage and
current signal into A/D converter of an embedded system.
With the converted data, power parameters can be
calculated. The power parameters are then sent to the
control centers of utility company via the GPRS device
connected to the system. With this system, fewer people
are required to process the data. The automation can also
avoid any conflicts or problems due to human errors.
Furthermore, the system allows saving the time and the
cost to input the data into databases.
(2) By using an automatic meter reading device in electricity
distribution systems, not only does increase it the
efficiency of meters reading, but also provide capabilities
like electricity control, load management, and time-of-use
rate.
(3) Since embedded systems and GPRS devices are
expensive, readers for different meters, like electricity,
water, and natural gas, can share one embedded system
with GPRS built-in. If several customers live in an
apartment building, they only need to purchase one
system for the whole building to lower the cost.
（SQL Server）
Utility Database
Main Menu
Communication User
Graph of User Report
Interface Account
Utility Usage Print
Management
TCP/IP Protocol
Network AES Application
TCP/IP Protocol
 6

VII. REFERENCES Yu-Wei Huang was born in the Taiwan, R.O.C., 1959. He received his BSEE
and MSEE degree from National Tsing Hua University in 1981 and 1983
[1] Patrick, A., Newbury, J., and Gargan, S., "Two-way communications respectively, Ph.D. from National Cheng Kung University in 1989. Since 1996,
systems in the electricity supply industry," IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, he has been a professor at National Chang-Hua University of Education. His
Vol.13, pp. 53 -58, Jan. 1998. research interests are in microprocessor control and power system.
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[3] Donovan, D., "Cellular control channel communications for distribution
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[4] Anderson, H.R., "Measured data transmission performance for AM
broadcast-VHF radio distribution automation communication system,"
IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, Vol. 4 Issue: 1, pp. 82 -89, Jan. 1989.
[5] Shwehdi, M.H. and Jacobsen, C., "A Microprocessor-Based Digital
Wattmeter System Design," in Proc. 1996 IECEC Energy Conversion
Engineering Conference, Vol. 3, pp. 1840 -1845.
[6] S.W. Lee, C.S. Wu, M.S. Chiou, and K.T. Wu, “Design of an automatic
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1 , pp. 631-636.
[7] Delsing, J., Hyyppa, K., and Isaksson, T., "The IP-meter, design concept
and example implementation of an Internet enabled power line quality
meter," in Proc. 2000 IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology
Conference, Vol. 2, pp. 657-660.
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services over GPRS using MPEG-4 coded video," in Proc. 1999 IEEE
Vehicular Technology Conference, Vol.1, pp. 401-405.
[9] Cheng Zhang, Liang He, and Song Cui, "The study on DSR transmission
over GPRS," in Proc. 2002 IEEE Acoustics, Speech, and Signal
Processing Conference, Vol. 2, pp. 2081 -2084.
[10] Fabri, S.N., Worrall, S., Sadka, A., and Kondoz, A., "Real-time video
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[11] Chakrabarti, S. and Mishra, A., "A network architecture for global
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[12] Constantinos F. Grecas, Sotirios I. Maniatis, and Iakovos S. Venieris,
"GIP: an infrastructure for mobile intranets deployment, Wireless
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330.
[13] Chih-hsien Kung and Devaney, M.J., "Multirate digital power metering,"
Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference, 1995, pp. 179-
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[14] C.P. Young and M.J. Devaney, "Digital power metering manifold," in Proc.
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[15] WISCORE Inc., http://www.wiscore.com/, NET-Start production
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[16] Siemens Inc., MC35 Hardware Interface Description, Version: 05.00,
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[17] Arcturus Networks Inc., http://www.µClinux.org, Embedded
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VIII. BIOGRAPHIES

Chih-Hung Wu was born in the Taiwan, R.O.C., 1973. He received his BSEE
degree from Chung Yuan Christian University in 1995, MSEE from National
Chang-Hua University of Education in 1998. Now, he is a Ph.D. candidate of
National Chang-Hua University of Education. Since 1998, he has been a lecture
at Chien Kuo Institute of Technology. His research interests are in supervisory
control and data acquisition (SCADA) and wireless communication.

Shun-Chien Chang was born in the Taiwan, R.O.C., 1979. He received his
BSEE degree from the Sjsmit Institute of Technology. Now, he is a M.S.
candidate of National Chang-Hua University of Education. His research interests
are in microprocessor control and IC circuit design.

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