Journal of Communications Vol. 9, No. 9, September 2014 ©2014 Engineering and Technology Publishing 658 Recent Advances in EN13757 Based Smart Grid Communication Axel Sikora 1 , Peter Lehmann 1 , Naksit Anantalapochai 2 , Martin Dold 2 , David Rahusen 2 , Alexander Rohleder 2 1 Laboratory Embedded Systems and Communication Electronics, University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, D77652 Offenburg, Germany 2 Steinbeis Transfer Center Embedded Design and Networking, D79423 Heitersheim, Germany Email: {axel.sikora, peter.lehmann}@hs-offenburg.de; {naksit.anantalapochai, martin.dold, david.rahusen, alexander.rohleder}@stzedn.de Abstract—The communication technologies for automatic meter reading (smart metering) and for energy production, distribution and consumption networks (smart grid) have the potential to be one of the first really highly scaled cyber- physical applications. Due to the characteristics of the energy market, which is multi-“media”, multi-utility, and multi-vendor on the different levels of the value chain, standards are of key importance to guarantee interoperability and seamless communication. For the European markets, the EN13757 M- Bus standard family has become the standard of choice. However, the standard family is very flexible and can be adapted to the various requirements. This paper shall give an overview on the existing variants. The recent and actual advances are described in more detail. All information is backed by the experience from a fully independent implementation of the EN131757-4 of the authors’ team. 1 Index Terms—Smart grid communication, local metrological network, wireless M-Bus, EN13757 I. INTRODUCTION Efficient, low-cost and stable communication solutions are a major stepping stone for smart metering and smart grid applications. This especially holds true for the so called primary communication or Local Metrological Network (LMN) between a local sensor or actuator and a data collector or gateway. LMNs have the potential to become the first cyber-physical applications with really large-scale multi-vendor installations, where small embedded sensors and actuators are interconnected to backend database services in the cloud. M-Bus according to EN 13757 [1] is a major contender for LMN of Smart Metering and Smart Grid applications, as it holds the promise of a flexible, albeit optimized solution. It enjoys wide popularity in continental Europe, but increasingly in many other regions of the world. Especially, the Wireless M-Bus (EN13757-4) is characterized by a wide variety of different operation modes (C-, F-, N-, R2-, S-, and T-modes), which work in different frequencies (i.e. 868 MHz, 433 MHz, and 169 MHz). Manuscript received April 28, 2014; revised September 16, 2014. Corresponding author email: axel.sikora@hs-offenburg.de. doi:10.12720/jcm.9.9.658-664 Although the basic EN13757-4 standard, which is presented in ch. II of this paper, already provides an enormous flexibility, various extensions and adaptations have been developed or still are under development. These additional dialects might have technical or non- technical background and add more complexity to a fundamentally relatively easy protocol. These dialects can be classified into three different groups, which are presented in more detail in the remainder of this contribution.  The application layer (APL) may be adapted or restricted to certain use cases, as it is done by the activities of Open Metering System (OMS) Group [2], or Dutch Smart Metering Recommendations (DSMR) [3], also known as Netherlands Technical Agreements 8130 (NTA 8130) [4] commissioned by the Dutch Grid Companies (ENBIN). Also, other application layers can be directly integrated, like the “Device Language Message specification” (DLMS) and its “COmpanion Specification for Energy Metering” (COSEM) [5], [6]. These extensions are discussed in ch. III.  The specifications of all layers may be adapted. This especially is the case for some country specific dialects, as specified from the Comitato Italiano Gaz (CIG) [7] in Italy or the Gaz réseau Distribution France (GRdF) [8] in France. These modified specifications are discussed in ch. IV.  Extensions might also be derived along the requirements of security and privacy. The currently ongoing activities of the German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, BSI) can be seen as example for such security related extensions. The BSI has designed a Protection Profile (PP) and a Technical Directive (TR) for the communication unit of an intelligent measurement system (Smart Meter Gateway PP) [9] and for the Security Module of a Smart Metering System (Security Module PP) [10], which were first released in March 2013 and which partially refer to the secure LMN specifications of the OMS Group. They are presented in ch. V. At the end of this contribution, various implementation related aspects and results are discussed in ch. VI.