New Smart Meter SoC from Texas Instruments aims to reduce system costs and improve reliability in e-meter designs
The integration of metrology, application and communication functions in one single chip allows developers to simplify designs, increase flexibility and reduce system costs for smart e-metering applications. By eliminating the need for additional discrete components and redundant interfaces, the integration increases the reliability of smart e-meter designs. The new Smart Meter SoC provides developers with the ultimate level of integration, complements TI’s complete portfolio for smart grid e-meter designs and now allows customers to scale their smart e-metering designs from several discrete components to the new integrated solution.
The new Smart Meter SoC is a fully integrated solution combining three independent engines. The metrology engine delivers 0.5 percent meter class accuracy and includes support for one-phase or three-phase meters. The independent, industry-standard ARM Cortex-M3 core allows ease of development for meter management firmware (DLMS/COSEM, advanced metrology, application profiles, network stack) and security with memory up to 1MB Flash. An independent, flexible communication engine includes support of multiple standards for power line communication (PLC) and radio frequency (RF) communications to allow developers to design products capable of communicating with wide area network (WAN) and home area network (HAN) domains and enabled devices.
TI’s Smart Meter SoC features certified metrology code and is fully independent from the application code, allowing developers to make easy software upgrades and maintenance.
The SoC supports TI’s plcSUITE software for all narrowband PLC standards including G1, G3, PRIME, IEEE P1901.2, ITU – G.9903 and G.9904: a single platform for global markets reduces meter development cost and speeds time to market.
The SoC includes multiple communication interfaces to easily connect external components like TI’s RF transceivers to bridge WAN and HAN on one single chip (sub-1 GHz or 2.4 GHz).
The device plugs into TI’s new Smart Meter Board (SMB) 3.0 to support advanced features and near field communication (NFC), sub-1GHz, ZigBee® and Wi-Fi connectivity options.
The SoC supports the following TI smart grid software: metrology libraries or metroSUITE compliant with EN 50470-1/3, IEC62053-21/22/23, ANSIC12.1/10/20 for one-phase and three-phase meters; plcSUITE; RF communication in sub-1GHz bands (including 802.15.4g); ZigBee Smart Energy Profile (SEP) 1.x and SEP2.0 running on the Cortex-M3 core; prepayment MIFARE, NFC and encryption for design ease and flexibility.
Availability
The Smart Meter SoC is available immediately for sampling. Production quantities are expected in 3Q 2013.
More information about TI’s smart grid solutions at www.ti.com/smartgrid