Smart metering using wireless communication

Background:
The traditional metering has been to measure the usage of electricity, heating and water at the private households in Sweden. The metering data has mostly been manually collected by the consumers but the market is changing towards smarter systems where both the consumers and the developers can look at the data, costs or make smart energy usage choices. Smart metering provides a two-way communication channel between the meter and the energy monitoring system allowing for automated readings and data collection on consumption.

Today the focus has been to use ZigBee Pros’ home automation and smart energy profiles as the communication protocol between the meter and the energy monitoring system. A growing area is the usage of IPv6 in order to connect the new systems to the existing infrastructure that use IP.

Problem Statement:
We would like to investigate how IPv6 can be used in the smart metering area and if and how the application profiles for home automation and smart energy for Zigbee can be used together with IPv6. The Masters project will involve development of an IPv6 based smart metering application using Contiki OS with the uIPv6 communication stack and available low power MAC protocols. This metering application will be evaluated and compared against similar off-the-shelf Zigbee based systems for smart metering.

Requirements:
Students in MSc programs in Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics, and Computer Engineering or similar is suited for this job. Candidates are expected to have a strong background in computer communication for real-time environments but also in cryptography algorithms (encryption, integrity, authentication, etc.). Good mathematical and programming skills are strongly desired. It is also important that the applicant have good writing and communication skills. Please indicate a list of courses with marks and a CV in your application.