Interference-Mitigated ZigBee-Based Advanced Metering Infrastructure

An interference-mitigated ZigBee-based advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solution, namely IMM2ZM, has been developed for high-traffics smart metering (SM). The IMM2ZM incorporates multiradios multichannels network architecture and features an interference mitigation design by using multiobjective optimization. To evaluate the performance of the network due to interference, the channel-swapping time T_cs has been investigated. Analysis shows that when the sensitivity P_RX is less than-12 dBm, T_cs increases tremendously. Evaluation shows that there are significant improvements in the performance of the application-layer transmission rate σ and the average delay (D). The improvement figures are σ>∼ 300% and D>70% in a 10-floor building, σ >∼ 280% and D > 65% in a 20-floor building, and σ > ∼ 270% and D> 56% in a 30-floor building. Further analysis reveals that IMM2ZM results in typically less than 0.43 s delay for a 30-floor building under interference. This performance fulfills the latency requirement of less than 0.5 s for SMs in the USA (Magazine of Department of Energy Communications, USA, 2010). The IMM2ZM provides a high-traffics interference-mitigated ZigBee AMI solution.