In order to meet all of the challenges associated with deploying your advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) network, and attaining 100 percent coverage, Arc Innovations provides a flexible solution comprising a choice of several core networking modules that are tightly integrated.

Radio frequency mesh network

Arc Innovations' network solution consists of two semi-independent mesh networks, designed to quickly and efficiently send data to and from any gateway accessing a backhaul conduit. The upper mesh (UPM) provides a higher speed, longer range backhaul network to a gateway, while the lower mesh (LM) forms a network incorporating the CPE and utilises lower rate and lower range links. This intelligent design ensures network availability, optimised infrastructure utilisation, robustness, and dynamic self-healing and self-organising capabilities

To achieve the goals of 100 percent radio frequency (RF) coverage, Arc Innovations' RF network solution comes in two variations, RF urban and RF rural.

Radio frequency urban

Arc Innovations' RF mesh network solution for metro, urban, and suburban population densities is ideal where buildings and houses with CPE are no more than 300m apart. Each node within the mesh is able to participate in sending, receiving, and routing network traffic, which means there is no single point of failure. The dynamic self-organising aspects of Arc Innovations' solution ensure best route paths are always maintained, thereby enabling new, rapid deployments, as well as a fast response to faults, which saves time and energy.

Radio frequency rural

To facilitate RF connectivity with more remotely located CPE, Arc Innovations' RF rural network solution uses a point-to-point design incorporating high gain antennae on consumer end-point installations. Arc Innovations' field-proven experience has given rise to innovations such as RF network nodes that generate their own power. This helps the customer to overcome the issues associated with connecting to geographically remote CPE.

GPRS

Cost considerations may sometimes diminish the viability of widely extending your RF network coverage to all remotely located CPE. Arc Innovations understands that a flexible network solution is the key, and so it provides robust and reliable GPRS-based communications capabilities with its AMI meters. With this solution option, Arc Innovations' AMI meters connect to a network server at preset intervals, and allow the MDMS to upload their data logs using GPRS. In the event that GPRS is unavailable, the system has the ability to utilise short message service (SMS) to ensure that meter data continues to be uploaded successfully.

Satellite

As one of its business outcomes, Arc Innovations is totally committed to deliver 100 percent connectivity with CPE to all its customers. Occasionally, the challenges of geographically remote CPE render the solutions of GPRS or RF rural as commercially unsuitable. Using a network of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that provide worldwide coverage, Arc Innovations' satellite solution is the definitive answer to how you extend your AMI network to connect with CPE in areas beyond the geographic reach of terrestrial systems.