Radio Coverage Analysis of Anchor Nodes for the Localization and Monitoring of Smart Energy Meters (SEM)

Abstract

This paper evaluates the radio coverage of anchor nodes and reliability in an anchor-based wireless sensor network platform used in locating and monitoring smart energy meters. Knowledge of the location of smart energy meters is critical for network functionalities such as monitoring, billing and energy budget planning. One efficient technique of determining the location of field monitoring and measuring devices such as smart energy meters is the anchor-based localization. Anchor-based localization is a technique in which the unknown node's location is determined with reference to a location aware node. Anchor-based localization techniques require anchor nodes having good radio coverage to the unknown nodes. The error associated with localization is high when anchor nodes are not optimally accessed by unknown nodes in the network. This paper performed a radio coverage analysis and evaluated the reliability of anchor nodes within a network perimeter for the localization and monitoring of smart energy meters. An outage probability was used to verify reliability of the network for the localization and monitoring of the smart energy meters. Our result show that for a 100by100 meter perimeter, four anchor nodes will provide good reliability of radio coverage for the localization and monitoring of smart energy meters.