Extending Smart Meter System to Support Value-Added Services Securely

Smart meter systems will involve the following elements within the home:

  • Electricity meter
  • Gas meter
  • In-house display
  • Telecommunications hub

These will be connected through a wireless home area network (HAN) and the telecommunications hub will include a wide area network (WAN) link to back-end servers. Examples of the HAN and WAN technologies are ZigBee and GPRS respectively.

Typical smart meter setup

The Project Hydra concept is to extend this architecture by:

  • Providing HAN links to other in-home devices, such as telecare equipment.
  • Using secure microcontrollers, GlobalPlatform and Java Card to add security and privacy, and for dynamic management of software.

The second figure shows how small the changes are to support value-added services.

Project Hydra smart meter setup