Patent ID: 7782225
Filing Date: 2010-08-24
Classification: G01D,H04B,H04M,H04Q,Y02B,Y04S

Abstract:
1. A wireless network system for wide-area metering data collection, the network system comprising: two or more meter modules configured to monitor, store, encode and periodically transmit, via radio signals, metering data collected at a predetermined consumption interval; at least one receiver base station configured to receive, decode, store and forward the metering data to a data operations center (DOC) acting as a central database and a metering data gateway; the DOC configured to process, validate, and store metering data in a meter database maintained for every meter module in the network, wherein each of the meter modules collects the metering data for a consumption period comprised of a plurality of consumption intervals and encodes the metering data by using a logarithmic table to compress the metering data and reduce the number of bits needed for transmission, and the DOC maintains sets of logarithmic encoding tables, each set of the encoding tables corresponding to a different consumption interval pattern, and maintains a registry specifying a subset of encoding tables assigned to each of the meter modules.