The Hitchhiker's guide to choosing the compression algorithm for your smart meter data

Start Page
935
End Page
940
Article Number
6348285
Citation
IEEE International Energy Conference and Exhibition (ENERGYCON 2012)
Contribution to Conference
IEEE International Energy Conference and Exhibition, ENERGYCON 2012  
Publisher DOI
10.1109/EnergyCon.2012.6348285
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84870830672
Smart meters are increasingly penetrating the market, resulting in enormous data volumes to be communicated. In many cases, embedded devices collect the metering data and transmit them wirelessly to achieve cheap and facile deployment. Bandwidth is yet scarce and transmission occupies the spectrum. Smart meter data should hence be compressed prior to transmission. Here, solutions for personal computers are not applicable, as they are too resource-demanding. In this paper, we propose four lossless compression algorithms for smart meters. We analyze processing time and compression gains and compare the results with five off-the-shelf compression algorithms. We show that excellent compression gains can be achieved when investing a moderate amount of memory. A discussion of the suitability of the algorithms for different kinds of metering data is presented.
Subjects
DIN EN-62056-21
lossless data compression
smart metering