Nivis’ partner needed to improve their data acquisition and monitoring technology for utility usage over an increasingly wide-scale residential and commercial customer base. Confronted with the reality that they could not meet an 18 month deadline for design and deployment, the partner realized they required additional resources and expertise to meet their goals.

Nivis is the leading developer of unique and patented technologies for the design, development, deployment, and management of wireless data acquisition networks. The company provides low cost, highly reliable and massively scalable wireless sensor and control networks. With development teams in both the United States and Romania, Nivis delivers a highly skilled 24-hour development effort.

Attracted by Nivis’ mesh technology experience and the availability of a large development team, the partner contracted with Nivis to develop and deploy a large-scale RF mesh technology solution for AMI. The partner’s aggressive goal was to be the first to market with an innovative and cost-effective technology that would meet the needs of the rapidly growing AMI market.

From initial design specifications provided by the partner, the Nivis team employed a highly skilled and dedicated team of designers to design and develop the new technology solution. The complete solution included the design of three main elements:

• robust hardware that integrates with current metering solutions
• auto-intelligent mesh protocol that allows the meters to successfully navigate data through dynamic real-world automatic meter reading (AMR) routing, and
• innovative, back office software to manage the mesh network efficiently

Nivis employees adopted the same sense of urgency that the partner brought to the design table. “Nivis drove the development and deployment from start to finish,” stated the vice-president of marketing for their partner. “They provided personal and concentrated attention, as if we were their only client.”

Nivis relied upon their long-time experience in network data acquisition to provide their partner with a complete solution that was highly reliable and uniquely scalable. “One of the things that made Nivis stand out from competing vendors was that they took an end-to-end approach to our network, “Nivis would take us through the entire lifecycle and provide a complete solution--from design to management and maintenance of the network.”

“Creativity in designing the solution was crucial to us. Because we were involved in trying to achieve something that had never been accomplished before, we needed a team with an innovative and pioneering spirit. Nivis provided us with not only base level expertise, but also an inventiveness that was vital to our success.”

The proprietary alarm transmission Nivis designed is an example of this ingenuity. In the event of a meter failure, the software allows sensors to communicate alarms within seconds to the back office. Critically important in responding to customer needs, the alarm had to be reliable. A false positive alarm would disrupt the network and jeopardize the integrity of the system.

The alarm transmission process also needed to effectively handle a large scale alarm. Since an alarm condition, such as a power outage, may happen at the same time for each radio node, alarm messages would be sent simultaneously from each node. This type of transmission would overload the network, creating a bottleneck. To ensure that a bottleneck did not occur, Nivis designed a proprietary alarm transmission process. This process makes certain that in the event of a large scale alarm, the transmissions do not happen at the same time and the number of messages transmitted is significantly reduced.

The Nivis team demonstrated innovation throughout the design and development process. During testing of the new mesh technology, the design team encountered challenges while scaling from 500 to 1,500 endpoints. These issues were readily addressed by the experienced staff at Nivis and solved quickly and effectively. At 10,000 points, the technology was exported to a beta-test customer with virtually no issues.

Nivis’ expertise helped their partner achieve their goal of delivering the industry’s first large-scale wireless sensor and control network in AMI. The resulting product is a scalable, dynamic, two-way RF solution that increases efficiencies at every touch point.

The system provides reliable monitoring and control of multiple end points while simultaneously validating meter readings and transmitting database records for millions of devices. The back office software, designed by Nivis, equips their partner with the capability to remotely monitor and access data for both two-way RF mesh and PLC technologies. Other technologies designed and developed by Nivis include wireless sensors and the RF mesh technology used to communicate directly to the data collector. The network’s improved data flow allows their partner to access more information faster, respond more effectively to customer needs, and lower their overall operational costs.

A dynamic, auto-intelligent routing protocol enables their partners to transform data into knowledge that can be instantly utilized to impact energy management, customer service, operational infrastructure and billing flexibility. This protocol, consisting of smart endpoints programmed to directly communicate to the collector or other endpoints, resulted in an extremely efficient and cost-effective method of data transmission. This proprietary RF mesh protocol operates over the unlicensed ISM 902-928MHz FHSS spectrum and allows it to operate freely and without any restrictions.

Compared with competing networks in the AMR industry, one of the most extraordinary features of the Nivis mesh network is self routing and self healing. These capabilities allow the nodes to choose a path and manage itself around a group of devices that suddenly lose connectivity. The self routing mechanism is especially important due to limitations of RF connectivity. Because most meters are physically located on the sides of buildings, RF is limited to a 180 degree line of sight. Self routing of nodes allows their partner to build a network that is almost 100% reliable in any type of deployment situation.

All meters can be programmed remotely and are fully operational within three days of deployment. With remote programming, utilities can customize time-of-use and critical peak pricing, support load control, and improve customer notification.

Because of the relationship between the two companies, Nivis’ partner was able to meet its 18 month deadline for the development of the RF mesh technology. “We were looking for leadership in mesh technology protocol, Nivis provided the people and the product for us to make it happen.”

Following the deployment of this innovative residential and commercial technology, Nivis’ partner saw the creation of ½ million in increased revenue with an additional 6 ½ million orders to be filled in the next 6-18 months. The company projects future growth estimates to be approximately 30 million annually.

Through their development effort, Nivis delivered ground-breaking software, smart sensors, and a revolutionary networking protocol that enabled their partner to lead the industry in providing innovative AMI solutions. The resulting product provides utility companies with a more effective solution for the transmission of data and the ability to utilize that data to better meet customer needs.