Metering

From Metering to the Smart Grid

Atmel ARM-based solutions

Atmel ARM-based solutions are perfect for your metering applications

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n-home display units

In-home display units demand secure authentication

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The market for energy, water, and gas metering systems is rapidly changing, driven by new environmental and conservation concerns and regulations. Traditional standalone meters are now being replaced by complex networked systems that utilize a variety of communication methods. To meet the needs of this evolving Smart Grid, metering developers need solutions that can provide:

  • Intelligent support for application and communication stacks
  • Robust security functionality
  • Remote upgrades in the field
  • Support for communications protocols for home connectivity

Solutions from Metering to the Smart Grid

Atmel® offers unmatched expertise in microcontroller-centric systems, together with expertise in low power, connectivity, security, and analog acquisition, to support a wide range of metering applications:


The Atmel Advantage

Today's energy metering systems reside on two key networks. The home area network (HAN) provides inter-meter communication and supports in-home display units, as well as applications such as smart appliances, home security, and telecare. The wide area network (WAN) enables communication between the customer's home and the utility.

A network of interconnected Smart Meters facilitates the Smart Grid, a system that will enable controlled energy consumption, and can adjust demand dynamically for better efficiency. The Smart Grid will help address new challenges and applications such as limited natural resources, renewables, Plug-in Hybrid vehicles, and solar panel systems.

Atmel is well-positioned to offer solutions on Smart Grid communications networks with its RF transceivers and free software stacks, such as ZigBee PRO, 6loWPAN, and Smart Energy Profile., while our Atmel serial EEPROM and Atmel DataFlash® families support memory expansion for data logging, code shadowing, and remote firmware upgrades. Solutions for WiFi is also available with our partner H&D.

Atmel is also well placed to provide the semiconductor building blocks for computation, wireless communications, memory and security that are essential components. Atmel offers a complete portfolio of AVR 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers and AT91SAM ARM-based microcontrollers, as well as microprocessors that are the core of the Smart Grid components. Our technology solutions are surrounded by a strong ecosystem including software library, development tools, evaluation kits, and other resources. Atmel offers:

  • Complete Portfolio — The Atmel corporate focus is aligned with the requirements of metering applications giving a one stop shop for metering solutions, including microcontrollers, RF, memory, security, middleware, reference designs, and demonstration kits.
  • Wide Range of Microcontrollers — Atmel offers a wide variety of options, including 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers from 6-pin Atmel tinyAVR® through megaAVR®, AVR XMEGA™, 32-bit AVR, cortex-M3, ARM7, and ARM9 solutions running at 400Mhz
  • Power Efficiency — Atmel picoPower technology helps enable low-power solutions. Atmel has focused on low power consumption for more than ten years. The result is our outstanding picoPower® technology for tinyAVR, megaAVR, AVR XMEGA and AVR UC3 microcontrollers.
  • Connectivity — Atmel solutions provide support for SPI, USART, and TWI through USB and hosts to RF solutions
  • Security and Encryption — Atmel CryptoAuthentication™ chips offer robust security to safeguard networked metering applications
  • Industry-Leading Touch — The Atmel unique Touch technology lets developers implement everything from simple button replacements through a state of the art touchscreen for in-home display units
  • Broad Protocol Support — Atmel offers a wide variety of product options to support ZigBee and Smart Energy Profile, with 802.15.4 radio transceivers supporting both 2.4GHz and sub 1GHz, that can be used with our full range of microcontrollers running the zigbee stacks. We can also offer a Software-on-a-Chip solution.

Enabling Technologies