Automatic Wireless Meters Reading for Water
Distribution Network in Talsi City
A. Zabasta, N. Kunicina, Y. Chaiko, L. Ribickis
Riga Technical University, Faculty of Power and Electrical Engineering, Institute of Industrial Electronics and
Electrical Engineering
Riga, Latvia, Kalku 1, LV 1658, phone: +371 67089415, +371 67089051, e – mail: Anatolijs.Zabasta@rtu.lv,
Kunicina@latnet.lv, Jelena.Caiko@rtu.lv, Leonids.Ribickis@rtu.lv;
Abstract—Nowadays, there is a growing need to develop
appropriate methods to acquire, process and interpret large
amounts of data in real time to assist the decision making process
for optimal drinking water distribution systems management.
The presented wireless AMR methodology, which was piloted in
Talsi city, is designed as warning systems to prompt the
appropriate response to eliminate or mitigate leaks, client’s fraud
and to ensure customers and water supply companies with
reliable and timely data. One of the main benefits of the
methodology presented here is that it enables operators to
become more effective and efficient in emergency conditions.
Keywords: automatic meter reading, sensors, concentrators,
GPRS.
I. INTRODUCTION
Last year’s considerable investments have been made in
order to modernize water distribution networks (WDN) in the
cities and in rural regions of Latvia. For example, nowadays
most of WDN use Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
systems (SCADA) for control water pump stations.
A local water supply company, which ensures water supply
to 16 000 householders in one Latvian city with 45 000
inhabitants, calculated their loss in year 2008. The total
estimated loss of revenue calculated using local tariffs was
estimated about 1 140 000 EUR.
Therefore the lack of actual data about the state of WDN
and lack of reliable methods for localization of water leaks
prevents to reduce loss due to inaccurate meters, burst of pipes,
illegal connections and customer fraud.
The problem: is the lack of reliable and efficient methods
and tools for monitoring and control of water distribution
network that in its turn prevents to obtain current and historical
data about water network at source and input - output points.
II. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS SURVEY
Automatic meter reading, or AMR, is the technology of
automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status
data from meter devices (water, gas, electric etc.) and
transferring to a central database for billing, troubleshooting,
and analyzing. This advantage saves utility providers the
expenses of periodic trips to each physical location to read a
meter, but another advantage is billing that can be based on
near real time consumption rather than on estimates based on
previous or predicted consumption [4].
A major prerequisite required by automatic remote meter
reading to penetrate the market is the rapidly progressing
technological development. This applies both to the
availability of electronic consumption-measuring devices and
to the development of transmission methods in local areas via
data bus and radio. The availability of new communication
methods such as GSM, SMS and Internet services will also
play a major role in future for transmitting data at a favorable
price from residential buildings to central billing centers and
providing extra services for the user [1]. According to some
experts meter data receive rate of the water AMR system has
been showed up to 97.2% [4].
In a typical Wireless sensor network (WSN) battery-
powered sensor nodes are deployed in a region to monitor and
environmental information is collected to a base station (BS)
through wireless connection between the sensor nodes [7].
The wireless sensor node, being a micro-electronic device,
can only be equipped with a limited power source (<0.5 Ah,
1.2 V). In some application scenarios, replenishment of power
resources might be impossible. Sensor node lifetime,
therefore, shows a strong dependence on battery lifetime.
Since it is not an easy task to replace the battery, low energy
consumption is the major concern in WSN [6].
A distributed and self-organizing control is preferred for
scalability. Some of experts propose the spatial decomposition
of the network into subsystems, which have their own sensors,
actuators and intelligent controller (semiautonomous agents).
The intelligent agent in each subsystem can sense its
environment in real time, process the information gathered,
take local actions and can cooperate with other subsystems
and have higher level supervisory control if necessary [3][5].
III. AUTOMATIC METERS READING FOR TALSI
Micro Dators ltd., IT House ltd. and Ventspils University
together with Talsi City Council and Talsu Water ltd. at the
end of 2009 started a project aiming to develop AMR system
in the restricted part of Talsi water distribution network.
It was envisaged by the end of the year 2010 to install: 347
water flow meters, 19 water pressure meters and metering data
reading and transmitting equipment. Servers and software for
network monitoring, metering data analysis and reports
provision to be installed in Talsi Water (TW) premises. One of
the project’s tasks includes working out a solution for at least e. To develop the system and to connect new customers
a semi automating billing for water consumption, therefore without major investment;
solution for interface between existing bookkeeping IS and
metering data base was expected. f. To exploit advantages of mobile network data
transmission technology that develops study.
A. Solution’s block schemes At fig.2 represented concentrator (gateway) periodically
A technical solutions recommended in a project reads metering data transmitted from water flow and water
―Development of computerized model for Kurzeme region pressure meters and ensures its availability on website.
GPRS /SMS
communal utility control‖ [9] has been implemented in the
project ―Talsi district computerized water utility monitoring
and control system – delivery and implementation‖ [10]. Radio ATMEGA48 GPRS
SIM
receiver micro- modem
card
868 MHz processor TELIT
Water flow meter
Schmitt
trigger
Interface with
existing
customer IS RS 232 RS 232 AC/DC
DC/DC
Concentrators A XML
inverter
Interface for Interface for
Water flow meter programming programming
My SQL Data
base
Figure 2. A block scheme of concentrator
GPRS modem
Water flow meter
Applications for
analysis and The main elements of the concentrator:
reports
Microcontroller (Atmel), which controls receiver and
Sensor
User web
all concentrator. It is also a place for storage of
interface metering data, obtained from dedicated sensors.
Concentrator B Receiver, which uses Short Range Devices (SRD)
unlicensed telemetry band, 868 to 870 MHz.
Sensor TELIT GSM modems GM862 for data transmission. It
has all necessary elements for implementation GPRS
Figure 1. A block scheme of technical solution
modem functions. The modem has an internal
At fig. 1 one can see AMR system that applies such processor and memory for programming at PYTHON
solutions: language.

Water flow and water pressure meters with impulse
output are used in order to provide data to sensors –
transmitters. For this purpose existing meters are
equipped with accessories (―herkons‖), which convert
magnetic signals into electrical impulses.
Data transmission from sensors to concentrators is
done using Short Range Devices (SRD) unlicensed
telemetry band 868 MHz;
GSM network (GPRS) is used for data transmission
between concentrators and centralized server;
MySQL data base is used for metering data storage
and processing;
System’s user access to data base is implemented via
web interface.
Such solution provides opportunity:
a. To allocate a central server in any Latvian or foreign
data centre, where internet connection is available;
b. To choose any available GSM network operator or
several operators simultaneously;
c. To utilize existing mobile operator networks and do
not make investment into telecommunication
network;
d. To employ advantages of competition among network
operators, choosing the best price and services;
There are 2 types of Concentrators:
The first one collects data from sensors - transmitters
installed next to meters at client site. Such concentrator
besides of GSM modem contents receiver in order to
receive messages from sensors.
The second one usually is installed next to water
meters. It has two inputs: one for the signals from
water flow and another from water pressure meter.
The main function of the sensor - transmitter is to receive
impulses from meter, transform them into messages and to
transmit with particular periodicity to dedicated concentrator.
Block schema of the sensor – transmitter (see fig. 3)
consists of such modules:
ATMEGA48/88 microprocessor, which receives
impulses from meters, transforms into telegrams and
conveys them to transmitter. Microprocessor is
connected to the meter with wired circuit. It listens to
herkon’s state changes (impulses) and records them in
the memory.
The microprocessor uses at ―C‖ language written
program. Adjusted for local needs Wireless M-Bus
protocol is used for radio link.
Transmitter RFM22, which transmits telegrams to
concentrator using 868 MHz frequency.
 The power supply of module is ensured by 3 V
battery, which life cycle is estimated about 6 - 10
years.
ATMEGA48 Radio
micropro- transmitter
Input signal cessor 868 MHz
RS 232 3V
battery
Interface for
programming
Figure 3. Block scheme of sensor – transmitter
At fig. 4 one can see an image of sensor– transmitter with 3 V
battery.
B. Obstacles to be overcome
The performance of AMR could be characterized at least
by two measures: the first is operating lifetime of the system
without replacing batteries, but the second is metering data
reading and transmitting rate.
Figure 4. The sensor - transmitter
The objectives of ultra low energy consumption and long
operative lifetime required by water AMR systems rely on the
feasibility of achieving an accurate synchronization of all
sensors (nodes) into the network. The completeness of the
network wake up process is mandatory: if some nodes do not
wake up when required, in addition to the loss of information
from these "dead" nodes, the network will not drive the data
from some of the meters to the concentrator due to the lack of
valid routes.
Some sensor nodes may fail not only due to lack of power,
but due to physical damage or environmental interference. The
failure of sensor nodes should not affect the overall task of the
sensor network. This is the reliability or fault tolerance issue
[7]. Fault tolerance is the ability to sustain sensor network
functionalities without any interruption due to sensor node
failures [2].
Moreover risks exists that large number of nodes
transmitting and receiving messages randomly would generate
an inadmissible volume of message collisions and the
consequent retransmissions, thus flooding and saturating the
network and therefore significantly reducing transmit rate.
Researchers and engineers, which implemented Talsi
project, were bounded by client’s requirements and first of all
regarding cost, which cannot exceed 30-35 EUR per one
sensor –transmitter. The next important factor to be taken in
account is customers’ manipulation with individual water
meters widespread in post soviet society. Thus the decision
was to develop cheap, robust, but effective system.
The sensors of the system have only two regimes:
registration of impulses from water meters and transmission of
telegrams several times per hour, therefore synchronization is
not used for network’s sensors. Defined probability of
message collision is about 1:10 000. Until now only few cases
were noted, but it was not possible to quantify them.
The power consumption of the sensors / transmitters is
estimated for operation time at least 10 years without battery
replacement. Such operation lifetime is achieved thanks to
7500 – 8000 mAh battery (see Fig.4) and economical regime
of transmitter. Depend on setting the microprocessor switch on
the transmitter two or more times per hour with the
transmitting time 20 - 50 msec, thus between sessions
transmitter is switched off.
Replacement of obsolete water flow meters diminished
risk of fraud, however the risk of tampering of impulses
device – herkons, which could be enslaved by magnets, still
persists. A soft for alerting herkons, impacted by magnets, was
developed and meanwhile is tested.
The next factor affecting AMR performance is reliability
of GSM network used for transmitting data between
concentrators and central server. Although GSM networks in
Talsi region appear 100% coverage and almost 100% time in
the air, in reality delays and unavailability of connections
cause Talsi ARM more frequently than other factors due to
frequent overloading of network and lower priority of GPRS
in comparison with voice and SMS traffic.
In order to reduce the volume of data sent from
concentrators to server and back text abbreviations and text
cut are applied strongly for data files, moreover files are split
into shot messages applying Md5 sum aiming to check
integrity of files [8]. Therefore if some of messages have been
corrupted, only part of a file to be transmitted repeatedly.
Increasing time between telegrams to be considered as the
necessary measure, because it does not contradict with quality
of service agreed by project partners.
C. Benfits for users
(hour)
(Consumption)
(Average consumption)
Figure 5. Example of water consumption by days
 The system provides opportunity to monitor and plot
metering data on the chart. The necessary water meter or a
group of meters could be selected using one or more unique
characteristics, for example by serial number. It is possible to
plot data observing by hours, days, month or years. Two kinds
of plots are available: the first one is absolute water
consumption over selected period of time, but the second one
shows statistical trend by current period (see fig. 5).
Figure 6. Example of correspondenting tables in two steps of billing process
Availability of actual meter data opens new opportunities
for customer service, for example to provide automatic meter
data transfer into Talsi Water existing billing system. A
preliminary comparison between tables of MySQL data base
that stores water meter records and tables of customer data
processing system, using for billing by Talsi Water, has been
made. An example of corresponding data tables describing
two steps of the billing process ―Basic data verification and
synchronization‖ and „Consumption registration‖ is
represented at Fig. 6.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
1. The lack of reliable and efficient methods and tools
for monitoring and control of water distribution networks, the
lack of current and historical data about water networks favors
significant loss due to leaks, inaccurate meters, burst of pipes,
illegal connections and customer fraud.
2. Automatic wireless water meters reading system
developing in Talsi city includes water flow and pressure
meters, metering data reading and transmitting equipment,
servers and software for monitoring network and provision
analysis and reports.
3. AMR system in Talsi, which applies two stage data
collection and processing system (sensors transmit data to
concentrators using SRD band 868 MHz; in its turn the
traffic between concentrators and central server is ensured by
GPRS), provides opportunities to collect data from difficult to
access meters, to utilize existing mobile operator networks, to
employ advantages of competition among network operators,
to develop the system and to connect new customers without
major investment;
4. The requirement to develop cheap, robust, but
effective system was resolved as tradeoff between cost and
functionality of the system. As a result sensors operate only in
two regimes: registration of impulses from water meters and
transmission of telegrams to concentrators. Synchronization is
not used for network’s sensors. In order to reduce GPRS
traffic thus to save cost of network services, text
abbreviations, text cut and files splitting into shot messages
are applied. Increasing time between telegrams also to be
considered for reducing excessive traffic.
5. The system provides opportunity to observe single
water meter or a group of meters and to plot metering data on
the charts. Once a manager of one small company complained
to TW that amount at the bill was at least twice more than
usually thanks to ―stupid system‖.TW operator reviewed the
company’s water consumption records and found that unusual
water flow at one toilet meter had place from 19 p.m. on
Friday by 6 a.m. on Monday. Getting such information the
manager agreed that the reason is rather his staff behaviour
than the new system.
6. In the beginning of 2011 all 294 concentrators have
been put into operation (http://talsi.aquamet.lv/ ) and first bills
based on AMR have been sent to customers. Web interface
and e-services for clients (for example, SMS alerting
consumption above threshold set by client) are given over to
TW for testing.
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