Electricity meters with constant access to power (and back-up battery during black-outs) may use mesh protocols to extend the network coverage. Radiocrafts offer Tinymesh, ZigBee and 6LoWPAN solutions. Battery operated meters can be used together with a mesh, but these nodes will not take part in the forwarding of messages in the mesh. Tinymesh is a low cost mesh solution that can operate on any frequency band set by local regulations. It will carry different application protocols transparently, interfacing the meter through a UART interface. Multiple gateways can be added as the network grows. ZigBee networks are mostly used for in-house communication. The ZNM (ZigBee Network Module) and ZNM-SE (Smart Energy profile) are easy to use solutions offering the complete ZigBee stack in a module with API interface. 6LoWPAN is a standard for how to compress IPv6 packets to fit into a IEEE 802.15.4 radio packet. ZigBee IP and Wi-SUN use this technique, and can run on our IEEE 802.15.4 platforms.
Last Update: August 8, 2017