Patent ID: 8884774

Claim:
A system for communicating energy related information from a home to a remotely located utility provider, the system comprising: a plurality of devices positioned in the home, the devices each being configured to communicate using only one of a plurality of RF protocols; a home gateway positioned in the home and operable to simultaneously communicate with each of the plurality of devices utilizing one of a plurality of different RF protocols over an RF local area network (LAN) and to the utility provider over a wide area network (WAN); at least one of the plurality of devices positioned in the home also being configured to communicated to an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system independently from the communication to the home gateway; wherein the home gateway comprises a multi-band, software defined radio and a protocol emulator, wherein the protocol emulator controls the operation of the radio such that the home gateway simultaneously communicates to more than one of the plurality of devices using more than one of the plurality of RF protocols, wherein the protocol emulator is selectively programmable to add new RF protocols for communication in addition to the plurality of RF protocols already present.