Patent ID: 8189617
Filing Date: 2012-05-29
Classification: G01R,H04L,Y04S

Abstract:
1. An electric power meter for providing simultaneous communications to a plurality of applications, the electric power meter comprising: at least one processor configured to perform multiple metering tasks; a serial channel coupling the at least one processor to a network adapter, the serial channel operating according to a first protocol; and the network adapter configured to receive a data packet using an Ethernet protocol wrapper over an Ethernet connection, remove said Ethernet protocol wrapper, determine a secondary protocol used by said data packet by inspecting said data packet after said Ethernet protocol wrapper is removed, route said data packet to the at least one processor if the determined secondary protocol matches the first protocol, and, if the secondary protocol does not match the first protocol, append a wrapper according to the first protocol to said data packet and route the data packet to the at least one processor after the wrapper is appended to the data packet; wherein the at least one processor is further configured to parse said data packet, provide a response packet including electrical energy metering information of said electric power meter using said first protocol and route said response packet to the network adapter over the serial channel; and the network adapter is further configured to append an Ethernet protocol wrapper to said response packet and transmit said response packet over said Ethernet connection, wherein said first protocol is a Modbus protocol and said secondary protocol is a Distributed Network Protocol (DNP) protocol and said data packet is a DNP data packet.