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Modern wireless technologies didn't avoid smart metering as an integral part of smart grids. They have a high flexibility and can be easily integrated into existing installations, it is feasible to use them for communication with meters. The goal of this paper is to give awareness of commonly used protocols/technologies in smart metering, provide basic characteristics of them and describe their deployment in smart grids and the consequent advantages/disadvantages.

Prepaid energy meters are relatively widespread in the world. These meters allow for distribution of electricity in developing and politically unstable countries. In developed countries, prepaid meters help distributors to solve problems with defaulters and they help underprivileged customers to better control the finances spent on consumption of energy. Currently smart metering technologies are being tested and introduced on the market. The Smart Meters bring significant changes in the measurement and billing of energy consumption. This paper deals with possible solutions for prepaid energy in the smart metering age.

With decreasing price and growing computational power FPGAs become interesting solution for growing set of embedded applications. It is often considered competitor for MCU or ASIC based solutions, mainly for their good ratio of computational capacity to price and its flexibility. Unfortunately the FPGA technology has some specifics that complicate their deployment in systems with requirements on high reliability and safety integrity. The most severe reliability issue is susceptibility to radiation induced errors. This paper introduces to this problem, techniques that are used to cope with it and gives comparison to MCU based solution.

The paper presents description of three different protocol gateways for interfacing HART pressure sensors. The gateways have been designed, programmed and realized as hardware prototypes. The first gateway is a wireless transducer between the HART interface of the sensor and a Bluetooth network. The second gateway connects the sensor to an Ethernet network with Modbus protocol. The third gateway is a wireless transducer for ZigBee networks. The gateways are based on embedded microcontrollers with the required interfaces. The software implementation is done in C using protocol libraries. Hardware and enclosure are designed for industrial applications. The gateways are adapted for use with HART pressure sensors.

The paper describes results of analysis of interoperability issues encountered when interconnecting systems that use heterogeneous communication interfaces. The initial analysis has been focused to issues faced when interconnecting heterogeneous fieldbuses. However the results obtained from the study are generally applicable to all systems that need to exchange information through incompatible interfaces using a broker that transforms data from one interface to the other. However, the research has shown that many interoperability problems can be eliminated by use of common concept for expression of sensor data regardless of the protocols used for the actual data exchange. The root cause of interoperability problems has been identified in the heterogeneity of concepts used for description of the reality. The authors argue, that common concept for sensor-actuator networks (SANETS) is needed to prevent unnecessary interoperability problems especially when building platforms for generic SANETS.

This paper describes security features of Bluetooth PAN wireless network. Security aspects are explained step-by-step from the basic items and key management to the authentication and data encryption. Finally, current problem with the Bluetooth security are presented.

The ZigBee communication standard is intended for use in various applications. Specific one is the building automation. Here plays an essential role the radio range in the building environment. As the propagation of the radio signal inside a building is almost impossible to be calculated, some practical tests have been conducted. The concept of the tests and the most important results are shown in this paper.

Contribution deals with recent development in smart sensors that are widely used all over automation projects. Authors present design and development of Internet oriented data concentrator as well as world first Internet oriented single pressure sensor with Ethernet 10BaseT interface, indicate and discuss problems with implementation of advanced communication technologies in industrial area. In the next part of the paper there are presented solutions of indicated problems by author’s own design and development. Second part of the paper deals with wireless technologies for automation purposes. Authors present a unique smart pressure sensor communicated by wireless Bluetooth technology with PDA and Smart Phone.

The paper shows the challenges associated with attempts to utilize Bluetooth communication interface for automation purposes like control and data acquisition. The paper describes major challenges, selected approach, first tests, first experiences with Bluetooth on Linux and first prototypes of embedded devices used for testing. Moreover the paper discusses some specific challenges associated with utilization of wireless communication techniques (with focus to Bluetooth) in automation. Finally the paper presents ideas (formal methods) that could be used to analyze, and improve reliability of such system, and approach (time triggered approach with clock synchronization) that could be used to improve the deterministicity of wireless communication channels.

One of the most important components of recent automation systems of machines, production lines and technological processes is the communication subsystem. Instead of parallel bus connections, the serial buses on various hierarchical levels of control structures are used. This contribution deals with problems of implementation of serial communication buses in a heterogeneous control instrumentation environment in industrial plants. It presents an aid for dealing with such problems on basis of a laboratory of industrial automation with heterogeneous communication testbed.

This paper deals with the utilisation of Ethernet based system directly on the sensor bus level. It describes several problems encountered when designing a sensor with embedded Ethernet interface. A realisation of such sensor is described.

Traditional way of interconnection of industrial fieldbuses is used for data acquisition and operator control. This type of interconnection is not suitable for realtime control as it usually uses MS Windows based software gateways that are not capable of real-time processing of information. To assure real-time data transfer it is necessary to use different principle of interconnection. This new approach is based on hardware gateways. Hardware gateways can transfer data in predictable time. At present time hardware gateways are already used to interconnect fieldbuses of different level. Our paper presents that it is possible to use hardware gateways to interconnect fieldbuses of same level.