Evolution of Home Energy Management and Smart Metering Communications towards 5G

Smart meters and home energy management systems form part of the automatic metering infrastructure (AMI) that can enable two-way communication between the customer and power utilities. This is a major step towards efficient energy management at the customer premises. AMI systems use several options for data communication that vary from power line communications, through to cellular communications. For this purpose, utilities will need new communication systems for AMI potentially based on fourth generation (4G) and fifth generation (5G) technologies. In this paper we describe the architecture and communication technologies currently used in AMI. Then we propose an innovative technology solution for future smart metering communication based on the presence of small cells in the home. The small cell can integrate the home energy management system and smart meter communications in a single product design. This proposal offers smart metering systems easier migration towards forthcoming 5G technology, with better coverage and link reliability. Preliminary simulation results show that our proposal could improve coverage area significantly by deploying small cells to reduce the number of user in outage from 30% to less than 5% in a single Macro Cell scenario.