58 Recent Patents on Engineering 2012, 6, 58-64 1872-2121/12 $100.00+.00 © 2012 Bentham Science Publishers A Wireless Utility Meter System: Design and Implementation Muhammad Al Farabi, Sevia Mahdaliza Idrus*, Nadiatulhuda Zulkifli, Arnidza Ramli, Fenddizulkarnain and Afifah Taat Photonics Technology Laboratory, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia Received: September 21, 2011 Revised: November 29, 2011 Accepted: January 14, 2012 Abstract: The conventional utility billing system suffers from the inefficiency of utility provider’s workforce deploy- ment. Apart from the financial cost issue, unnecessary workforce deployment will result in an extensive period of utility meter reading and billing. The solution proposed in the authors’ Malaysian patents numbered PI2010002408 and PI20100022305 is the utilization of a wireless utility meter system for application of water meter specifically and other utility types, at large. The proposed wireless utility meter system makes use of an onsite utility usage monitoring and bill- ing, that is capable of reducing the utility provider’s workforce deployment while serving as a necessary transient step to- wards a truly automatic monitoring and billing solution. Another advantage in the proposed semi-automatic wireless onsite meter reading is the elimination of unnecessary cost of maintaining the complicated fully automatic offsite wireless meter reading. The proposed wireless utility meter system is designed using SKXBee wireless modules. In the proposed design, consideration is also given to the utility usage database system. Indeed, in the near future, the proposed wireless utility meter design can be implemented as a transient step before the application of a fully automatic wireless meter solu- tion becomes feasible in the third world countries. Keywords: Database, onsite meter reading, utility, utility meter, Wireless. 1. INTRODUCTION Wireless utility meter system acts as an automatic data collector, a diagnostic tool, status checker and billing man- ager for energy measuring devices such as water, gas and electric meters [1]. The proposed wireless utility meter sys- tem offers an overhead cost saving and improvement in the billing service quality via automatic meter reading. The pro- posed system provides a more effective management of util- ity metering and billing for high density buildings such as apartments, office buildings, condominiums and retail cen- tres. The proposed system is also practical, effective and time saving. In 2009, the New York City mayor has announced that a citywide installation of automatic utility meter reading sys- tem will be implemented, showing the importance of the system in assuring customer satisfaction while reducing the overall billing costs. Each utility meter will have a trans- ponder to send data periodically to a network of rooftop re- ceivers. Bills will then be sent to the users monthly, instead of the conventional three months period. Hence, users will have more precise usage records and flexible usage control. In mid 2010, a utility provider in Malaysia has imposed a regulation that requires every high density buildings to change from the bundled utility meter system to individual utility meter system. It should be noted here that Malaysia still utilizes the conventional meter reading that is prone to errors and lacks of accuracy since reading is done *Address correspondence to this author at the Photonics Technology Labo- ratory, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, UniversitiTeknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia; Tel: +6 07-5535302; Fax: +6 07-5537592; E-mail: sevia@fke.utm.my bi-monthly. Apart from the resultant lower usage tariff, the building owners’ interference throughout the process of pro- viding utility service to the users will be solved. Building owners often charge higher utility tariff and claim it as part of the management costs. However, the implementation of individual utility meter system for high density buildings will increase the number of utility meters at the building, which will then be burdensome to the meter readers. The proposed wireless utility meter system attempts to solve the above-mentioned issues by employing mobile me- ter reader to wirelessly send control signal that controls the data logger on the meter. The proposed reading system is more reliable, designed to ease the collection of meter read- ings by the staff since the data is sent directly to the system reader, instead of manual reading. Consequently, a reduction of workforce deployment can be expected since a staff can potentially cover hundreds of meters within an hour. How- ever, since manpower is still needed to be in a certain range of the utility meter, this technique is referred to as an onsite wireless utility meter reading. The proposed wireless utility meter system is designed to minimize disruptions caused by power outage or component failure and poses little or no disturbance to the user’s prop- erty. The proposed system has low bandwidth usage and is unaffected by obstructed data transmission such as by walls, trees and rain drops. 2. RELEVANT PATENTS In [2], a wireless utility meter monitoring system capable of supporting a mesh topology of multiple utility meters is proposed. This system needs several additional mechanisms to track utility usage, enable the standby mode and utility