SMART METERING

DLMS/COSEM over LoRaWAN®

LoRaWAN® is now available as a low-power and cost-efficient connectivity option to roll out smart electricity meters. Acklio SCHC header compression and fragmentation enables DLMS/COSEM operations over LoRaWAN without specific adaptation to the protocol.

DLMS over LoRaWAN for smart metering

Standard-based solution
SCHC is the required adaptation layer for DLMS over LoRaWAN for water, gas and electricity metering.
Record-time integration to meters
Implementation respects the standard and application designs of your existing DLMS meters.
Perfect fit for multi-connectivity
Scalable solution that may be deployed with LoRaWAN only or as a complement to other connectivities (NB-IoT, PLC, RF Mesh, …)

30-90%

Data compression rate

ARCHITECTURE

Reference implementation with Acklio SCHC

The DLMS communication profile for LoRaWAN mandates the use of the SCHC adaptation layer. SCHC enables native IPv6/IPv4 connectivity over LoRaWAN by using operations of compression/decompression and fragmentation/defragmentation at the meter and the core network.

Pioneer & global leader of SCHC, Acklio offers the reference software to rollout DLMS solutions over LoRaWAN:

Acklio SCHC library

On the device side, SCHC software library can be embedded on the application processor (CPU or MCU) or on the LoRaWAN connectivity module.

Acklio Cloud Platform

On the core network side, the Acklio IP Core platform ensures transparent DLMS communication to the Head-End System and a unified addressing of devices.

TESTIMONIALS

DLMS over LoRaWAN with Acklio SCHC

“Utilities’ interest in LoRaWAN is growing, to fill in gaps in coverage of existing deployments and to provide the connectivity to an entire fleet of meters. We chose Acklio to ensure compliance with the new communication profile. It guarantees our meters with full interoperability with the global DLMS/COSEM ecosystem. Moreover, by completing integration in just a few weeks, working with Acklio allowed us to bring the product to market in record time!”

LeTae He
Vice-President at Kaifa

“EDF has supported the standardization effort of the SCHC technology since the beginning. As a solution provider, this standard layer allows us to diversify our technology portfolio and best fit the needs of our international customers, while providing them with the guarantee of interoperability.“

Vincent Audebert
IoT and Telecom Expert at EDF

“Leveraging DLMS’s broad experience in open and interoperable standards for electricity smart metering, the DLMS standard has been further developed for use in low-power wireless networks.
This opens up new opportunities for multi-commodity smart metering and is the first brick in implementing the DLMS protocol in low-power applications in the IoT world.”

Sergio Lazzarotto
President & Executive Director of DLMS UA

PERFORMANCES

SCHC optimizations for DLMS/COSEM messages

Header Compression
Payload Compression
SCHC Fragmentation

Header Compression

The DLMS communication profile for LPWAN specifies the application of SCHC compression to IP headers and DLMS Wrapper. Acklio SCHC encodes the 48 bytes of IPv6/UDP headers and the 8-byte DLMS wrapper within a rule ID of 1 to 3 bytes, representing a header-compression ratio of 90%.

Payload Compression

Acklio takes SCHC compression two steps further to the DLMS specifications, also applying compression to DLMS/COSEM payload (downlink HES queries and uplink metering data). In this case, Acklio SCHC achieve 75% compression rate on the whole IPv6/UDP/DLMS packet.

SCHC Fragmentation

The profile for LPWAN also implements the SCHC fragmentation that dynamically adapts the packets size transmitted up to the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU: from 11 to 242 bytes in LoRaWAN). SCHC ensures operations in all data rate conditions, and guarantees to take advantage of the connectivity’s full capacity when in optimal network conditions.

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

SCHC layer specified by Technology Alliances

SCHC is a compression and fragmentation framework tailored for LPWAN.

SCHC compression and fragmentation is a IETF standard by the LPWAN WG. The solution complies with RFCs 8724 and 9011.

IPv6 over LoRaWAN with SCHC is a prerequisite to DLMS over LoRaWAN as specified in the communication profile for LPWAN (Bluebook 14).

The LoRa Alliance leverages SCHC for IPv6 communication over LoRaWAN as specified in TS010-1.0.0.

RESOURCES

Whitepaper and Webinars

SCHC is a compression and fragmentation framework tailored for LPWAN.

WHITEPAPER

Roll out smart electricity meters over LoRaWAN®

Zoom on the liaison between the LoRa Alliance and the DLMS User Association. It highlights the outcomes, the new DLMS over LPWAN profile, and the role of SCHC adaptation layer.

PANEL – JULY 2022

LoRaWAN World Expo: DLMS on Multi-Ran approaches to IoT

360° live panel from LoRaWAN World Expo on DLMS meter deployment over LoRaWAN including feedback from field projects along with EDF Lab, Equatorial Group, NEPEN, and KAIFA Technology.

PANEL – DEC 2021

Simplify Smart Metering Solutions with LoRa Basics™ Modem

A webinar hosted by Semtech presenting the new Semtech LoRa Basics™ Modem software and the availability of adaptation layers for most required standards of DLMS and M-Bus.

WEBINAR

Application of DLMS over LoRaWAN