Research on Application of Cat.1 Module into IoT Smart Water Meter

The development of cellular Internet of Things (IoT) technology is fast and its applications into vertical industry are flourishing. As the entrance of cellular Internet of Things, communication module is the key to the development and application of the Internet of Things. Public utilities are the earliest and most mature areas of Internet of Things in using communication modules, in which smart electricity meters have reached 90% penetration rate, while smart water meters are relatively lagging behind, only reaching 40% penetration rate, so there is a large space for the development of smart water meters. At present, NB-IoT module is the main communication component of smart water meters, and its development is relatively mature, but NB-IoT network has certain coverage limitations in rural and some urban areas, resulting in the application of NB-IoT smart water meters into those areas is limited. Therefore, the Cat.1 technology and module, which has been developed rapidly in the past two years and is based on a wider coverage of 4G LTE network, has become a potential alternative or complementary technology of NB-IoT in the smart water meter industry. However, the application of Cat.1 technology and modules into smart water meters needs to solve and evaluate the power consumption problem in order to meet the extremely low power consumption requirements of smart water meters. The research carries out a pioneering study in evaluating the power consumption of Cat.1 smart water meter in a practical view, and results show that the power consumption of Cat.1 smart water meter is relatively lower than that of NB-IoT smart water meter due to shorter working time. Thus it is feasible to apply Cat. 1 module into smart water meter through carefully low-power design. The research gives an innovative technical solution to solve the limitation of present NB- IoT smart water meter in certain areas.