Wireless M-Bus is a European Norm for utility meter communication. It is standardized in EN13757-4. It is widely used for electricity, gas, water, heat meters and heat cost allocators. It also supports other types of environmental sensors. Together with the rest of the EN 13757 standard series it makes up a complete protocol stack with security mechanisms and definition of data formatting for the application layer.
The Wireless M-Bus standard is optimized for battery operation, targeting battery lifetimes of 15 – 20 years, reducing operational cost of the meter reading system. The low power consumption is due to the “bubble up” strategy for meter data, while the meter listens for commands in a short time window after the transmission. This means the transceiver can be in sleep mode most of the time, saving power. This is further supported by very small overhead in the frame format and efficient data coding.
The standard has taken advantage of the new frequency band at 169 MHz, to make a narrow band solution using 12.5 kHz channels. The relatively low frequency (VHF band) and the narrow bandwidth give very long communication range and robustness in difficult radio environments. This is important for reaching water and gas meters in particular.
Last Update: August 8, 2017