Hardware Design of Power Line Communication
Meter Reading Concentrator
ABSTRACT
With the rapid development of power undertaking of our country, the traditional ways of meter reading can not satisfy the demand of market any more. Based on the vast collecting and consulting of the concerned information of the remote meter reading system of the home and abroad and going deep into the consumers and power consumption administrative departments to investigate and research widely, a remote meter reading system adopting carrier communication technology of the low-voltage power line communication (PLC) had been proposed in this paper. It had network structure of three layers，i.e. the computer administrative system，concentrator and carrier meter. And the functions and characteristics of the whole system together with its every component had been analyzed. Because high attenuation，high noise and high distortion exist in the low-voltage power lines of our country ,special communication technology must be adopted.
First of all, the transmission characteristic when high-frequency signal was transmitted through power lines was analyzed. Secondly, the application of spread spectrum communication technology to carrier communication of the power line was emphatically discussed. Thirdly，the interior principle of the special MODEM IC SSC P300 adopting Spread-spectrum modem communication technology was deeply studied. Based on this，SSC P300 was selected to the reliable data transmission between the concentrator of the long-distance meter reading system and the terminal signal carrier ammeter. Being the heart of the automatic meter reading system，the concentrator connected the computer with the terminal carrier meter. The hardware system of the concentrator was emphatically designed according to the main functions and the demands for performance targets of the concentrator stated in the power trade standard of PRC. It was mainly composed of MCU external expanded RAM，clock module，watchdog module，the computer communication interface circuit and the PLC communication circuit together with its peripheral circuits·
KEYWORDS： carrier power line, spread spectrum communication technology, concentrator,
meter reading system