A pipelined automatic meter reading scheme

A communication scheme for radio-linked automatic meter reading (AMR) systems is presented. This scheme broadcasts a wake-up signal to all the meters that are to be read. It requires at most two frequency channels for both the wake-up signal and the returning data. The wake-up signal is sent only once for a specified group of meters and then the readings from that group of meters are returned in a pipelined fashion. The operation of a radio linked AMR is briefly reviewed. The details of the proposed communication scheme are then discussed and the results are summarized.<<ETX>>