A real case
A meter 15 km from the cooperative's headquarters, in a rural area, reports its reading every day. One reading a month is enough for billing: there's no longer any need to travel 45 km to read it.
Cooperatives and rural areas
Metering where there's no signal
The solution for the points on the network that could never be read remotely: the most distant ones, with the worst roads.
AMIAR meters communicate with each other by radio. They don't need 4G, 3G or 2G: a gateway with Internet access somewhere on the network is enough.
6 kmper hop, conservative planning
40–50 kmof multi-hop link
0SIM cards
The problem
Hours on the road for one reading
At a rural cooperative, reading a remote meter can mean two hours there and two hours back on rural roads, every month. And cellular-based smart metering doesn't work where there's no coverage.
- Costly manual readings for scattered users.
- No cellular signal for SIM-based meters.
- Disconnections and reconnections that require sending out a crew.
How it's deployed
Height, antennas and hops
The key in the field is gaining height at a few points. From there, the network extends from meter to meter.
Tower-mounted gateway
If the cooperative has a tower, a 12 V radio unit is installed at the top, with the Internet-connected gateway at the bottom.
External antenna on the first meters
With a 5 m cable, the antenna is taken up to the weatherhead or the pole, where it sits 6 to 7 m high.
The rest, with an internal antenna
The first meters provide coverage for the whole town. The rest are installed like any ordinary meter.
An entire village with five antennas
In a seaside village, a gateway and the first five meters with external antennas were installed. That was enough to get signal across the whole village: the next 200 meters were installed with internal antennas.
Results
What the cooperative gains
Meter reading without trips
Readings from rural and hard-to-reach users on the platform.
Disconnection for non-payment
No crews sent out, no vehicle wear and no confrontations.
Power outage alerts
Pinpoint the area without service before the user calls to complain.
Quality of service
Maximum and minimum voltage for each interval, to stay within rural regulatory limits.
Data for the regulator
Exports with latitude and longitude for the GIS system.
Water on the same network
Many cooperatives also manage water: water metering joins the same network.
Try it at your farthest point
A pilot with one gateway and two meters with external antennas validates long-range communication on your network.