Low Power AMR System Based on FPGA

This article presents a remote automatic meter reading (AMR) system as a result of the Mirakonta project, in which are involved several university investigation groups and a private company. The AMR system is composed by reader devices and a group of elements that allow a wireless connection to a central server. The system is based on taking a picture of the fluid meter digit display, preprocessing and transmitting it to a remote element using a radio frequency ad-hoc protocol. The reader device is implemented on a FPGA based system and the firmware can be updated remotely (remote reconfiguration). In addition, the different parameters of the reader can be configured remotely. To meet the low power requirements a sleep and wake-up technique is applied. All the requirements of the system have been covered, offering a hardware-software product that covers most needs of the end users.