TELEMETRY  INDUSTRY

Many network providers increased their commitment to machine to machine (M2M) in 2009, so a good range of both national and multinational M2M service options will be available in mature markets during 2010 and 2011. Although the M2M market is very fragmented, it's growing at over 30 percent per year. Gartner Chip analyst recently estimated that more than 150 million smart meters would be installed worldwide in the next 5 years. Gartner expects those 5 years to bring as much as $2 billion in business opportunities for semiconductor and chip makers.

LEGACY AMR TECHNOLOGIES

AMR technologies include , mobile and network technologies based on telephony platforms (wired and wireless), radio frequency , or power line transmission. The older AMR systems use outdated technologies like wired telephone lines, power line communications and the existing systems use a GSM/CDMA modem attached to the meter and send the data to the central server using SMS or GPRS data connection. These systems have several problems in terms of ensuring physical communication line connectivity or wireless coverage. The solution becomes dependent on the network laid out by a Telecom Operator and cannot overcome difficult terrains, RF shadows, weak coverage.

TANLA PATENTED TECHNOLOGY

The innovative solution from Tanla employs an ad-hoc wireless mesh network of communication nodes capable of collecting meter data  from utility meters and transmitting the data to a central station by hopping the data across other communication nodes for efficient and accurate billing, accounting and management purposes. Each communication node acts as meter reader as well as a router for the neigh boring meter readers. Thus the system forms a mesh network of meter (or sensor) readers that provides for automatic discovery of network, optimum routes, fault tolerant fail safe routing mechanism, encryption and compression techniques for transmission of usage data in a fast, secure and reliable manner.

The Tanla AMR invention utilizes an extremely low cost RF hardware and highly efficient wireless communication that reduces operational costs to a fraction. The use of low range RF hardware also reduces the hardware cost significantly. The ad-hoc wireless mesh framework provides an easy mechanism for 3rd party system integrators to integrate with many kinds of meters including water, gas, electricity or any other sensor network like defence  perimeter, environmental monitoring, stress monitoring. Since the communication nodes form a network of their own, a significant benefit of the system is that the solution and deployment is Telecom Network Independent. It also  helps system integrator to deploy extremely low cost communication mesh networks that provide a wide coverage of different land terrains, avoiding many of the shortcomings of alternate technologies. Low-cost M2M modules combined with Tanla Ad-hoc wireless mesh will enable a wide range of new-networked devices and business models. Key applications include smart grid, meter reading, security/surveillance, automotive systems, vending and point of sale, remote monitoring, and track and trace.