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Advanced Metering Infrastructure: A Reveiw
Mian Musa Riaz
Abstract—The power grid of today will transform to smart
grid sooner or later. Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)
will be backbone of smart grid. In AMI smart meters measures
the real time energy consumption and send it in real time
to central stations. AMI is also responsible for analyzing the
collected data. AMI also manages other applications such as
DSM and smart scheduling of loads. Therefore AMI plays an
important role in functioning of smart grids. We have discussed
different components of AMI in this article and also highlighted
working of these components. We discuss smart meters which is
the base of AMI. Then we discuss the communication technologies
used in different networks of AMI. We also discuss meter data
management system and demand response in this article too. As
smart grid is very vulnerable to attacks so its security is of utmost
importance. Security systems of AMI as well as Key management
system for authentication is also highlighted in this paper. As the
future is age of artificial intelligence so the paper also have some
insight of artificial intelligent meter. Finally we summarize some
research issues and challenges in AMI.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Smart grids are combining power, communication and In-
formation technology to revolutionize the services granted by
the legacy power grid. New challanges have been evolved
due to new ways of generation, transmission and distribution.
The new challanges include: the issues due to distributed
generation and its integration, demand of improved power
quality, emerging concerns about carbon footprint of plants
of fossil fuels and radioactive hazarads due to nuclear plants.
security and privacy of customers is also a hot issue. The
integration of electrical vehicles and storage is also creating
problems. To overcome the problem. some modern countries
are switching to Smart Grid (SG)[4].
Smart grids is a power system that enables two way power
flow and two way communication flow. The smart grid have
the abilities of self healing. The consumers also generate their
power. They use the generated power for their own use and sell
the surplus power to the utility thats why they are known as
prosumers in smart grid environment. The smart grid requires
detailed data and current state of the whole system. It uses
a large number of appliances, sensors, meters and communi-
cation devices for this purpose. All these devices perform in
real time. Smart grid deploys sensing devices that get data
from every point of system and manage it. It also detect
any operational glithces with the help of these sensors. The
AMI also plays very important role in this regard. It consist
of sensors which senses all the conditions and smart meters
which measure the energy use of customers. The collectors
then collect the data, organize it and send it to Meter data man-
agement system (MDMS). The world is ambulating towards
the smart grid and AMI with high speed. Several countries
have brought in mandatory legislations to adopt smart metering
networks. The EU states have planned to deploy nearly 200
million smart meters for power by 2020[3]. 400 smart grid
pojects have already been started in EU. 90 projects are about
smart meters .Likewise, in the U.S., the Smart Grid investment
grant program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009 facilitates deployment of large scale deployment
of smart metering infrastructures[3]. 6 million smart meters
were installed in canada in 2014 and many more is expected.
Similarly China, Japan and India are also moving towards AMI
swiftly. A review advanced metering infrastructure is presented
in this paper. 1st of all AMI is discussed in detail. Several
modules of AMI are discussed such as smart meter etc. Then
communication topologies and technologies are also discussed
in this article. security snd privacy is a major issue issue in the
smart grid and AMI. A lot of work is going on in making smart
grid more secure. Several securtity protocols and arrangements
are also discussed. As the world is moving towards towards
technology of artificial intelligence, so it also have effects on
smart meterimg. Research about artificial intelligence smart
meter is also covered in this article. It also has some insight
of ongoing research and further research oppurtunities in the
area of smart metering. We will start with the overview of
smart grid and advanced metering infrastrucure in the next
section.
II. S MART G RID AND A DVANED M ETERING
I NFRASTRUCTURE
Advanced metering infrastruture (AMI) is essential for the
realization of smart grid we can’t imagine a smart grid without
AMI. The AMI infrastructure consist of smart meters and
sensors, concentrators also known as collectors, communica-
tion system and meter data managment system. The smart
meters and sensors collect all the data. It consists of two
modules: communication board and meter board. These two
modules are interconnnected. The meter board measure the
power consumption. The communication board communicates
with outdoor environment such as collectors. The collectors
collect the data and send it to meter data management system.
The MDMS act as database. It act as a long term storage and
also analyze the data. The MDMS is connected with operations
center which operate the whole network and other systems of
utility commapanies for other services such as billing. AMI
uses two way communication. It enables connection of smart
meter with distribution system operator. The DSO can perform
its funtions more conviently due to this connection e.g. fault
detection. The subsections of AMI are explained in more detail
in the next section.

Figure II.1.
III. S UBSYSTEMS OF AMI
The subsystems of AMI are 1: Smart meters and smart de-
vices, 2: communication ; 3: Meter data management system.
These are discussed in the following sections.
A. Smart meters and Smart devices
Smart meters can be considered as a soul of AMI. Electricity
meters are used to measure the consumption of electricty by
consumers. The meters which are used conventionally are
accumulation meters. These meters record the consumtion over
some predefined period. The meter reader can then read the
reading of meter after some time and prepare bill. Now, some
consumers started using interval meters which record energy
usage over some predefiend short time interval, for example
an hour. This helps the utility to design time based tariffs.
Smart meters use two way communication. They show real
time usage of energy.
The smart meter architecture can be divided into five blocks
as shown in the figure. The blocks are signal acquisition, signal
conditioning, Analogue to digital conversion, computation and
communication.
Signal acquisition system measure the current and voltage.
It also measures the frequency of the system as well as
phase displacement. Other parameters such as power factor,
active/rective power can be calculated from these parameters.
The current and voltage can be measured by current and
voltage sensors respectively. A current Transformer can be
used for sensing current and isolation from the primary circuit.
In the signal conditioning stage, the signals are prepared for
the next step. The signals are added, subtracted, attenuated and
filtered in this step. These can be done on a single chip. A
low pass filter is also incorporated to avoid aliasing.
As the smart meters and whole AMI system work on digital
systems so the data obtained by the smart meters should be
converted to digital form. It is done by analog to digital
converter. The signals are first sampeled and then digitized.
The computation block do arithmetic operations such as
addition and subtraction on input signals. It also prepares
the signals for the communication module. It also do time
stamping of data. A digital signal processor is used in this
module.
Smart meters can also be used for smart scheduling of the
appliances. The smart meters collect data of these appliances
for a long period. It then analyze this data. It calculates the
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probabilities of these appliances for which they are switched
on. Then, it make a smart schedule for these appliances based
on these probabilities[2].
If a customers have installed renewable energy sources in his
home such as roof top PV panels or wind turbine generators.
Then smart grid provide the facility of buying the surplus
power from these prosumers. The smart meters do net metering
in this case.
The researchers are now working on artificial intelligent
smart meters. It will fetch data from the consumer’s appliances
and apply its aritificial intelligence algorithms on this data.
The AI meters can help in the further automation of Demand
response programs[1].
The communication module of smart meter and AMI is
discussed in detail in the next section.
Figure III.1.
B. Communication
There should be means of sending the data collected by
smart meters to the MDMS system. Smart meters should
also be able to recieve commands for operation of system.
Therefore communication is an integral part of AMI. As the
sensors and meters are high in number so there will be very
large bandwidth required for the transmission of this data.
Communication technologies are designed and selected on the
consideration of following factors[4]
1) big amount of information
2) Restriction in accessing data
3) confidentiallity of sensitive data
4) it should give accurate data
5) should provide condition of system
6) economical
7) flexibility for future technologies
There are large number of communication technologies that
can be considered for use in AMI. The commonly used
architecture is to collect data from various meters and then
collectively send it through high bandwidth channel to compo-
nents of MDMS. Examples of the communication technologies
used in AMI are:
1) Cellular
2) Copper or Optical fiber
3) Zigbee
4) WiMAX
5) Power line Carrier (PLC)
6) Broadband over power lines (BPL)
7) Bluetooth
8) Internet
9) General packet radio service (GPRS)
10) Satellite
11) Peer to peer

The topologies used in communication of AMI can be divided
into a group of two which are following:
1) Home Area Network (HAN): The home area network
is restricted to home, office or commercial buiding. All the
sensors, smart appliances, smart meters, renewable energy
resources (RERs), storage devices, PHEVs and controllers
commuicate with each other by home area network. They com-
municate with outside network through smart meter. HANs
required bandwidth varying from 10 kbps to 100 kbps from
device to device. Wireless technologies are mostly used in
HANs. The technologies which can be used are WiFi, Zigbee
and homeplug etc but zigbee is dominantly used technology.
Zigbee is wireless technology, consumes low power and also
is flexible and cost effective. Home plug is used to lower
extent. Home plug technology uses the power lines of the
house. BACnet is a wired technology that is mostly used in
commercial buildings.
2) Utility Network: For low bandwidth rquirement PLC
networks are used. When the number of nodes increases then
higher bandwidth is required. IEEE 802.16, mobile WiMax
and broadband PLC can be used in that case. Nowadays long
term evolution LTE is also growing with high speed and it is
also used for highbandwidth requirement of AMI. But LTE is
slightly costlier than other technologies so research is required
to make it cost effective.
C. Meter Data Management System (MDMS)
It is the master of the system. It stores the data, analyze
it and also perform funtions of billing. it helps in demand
respone, Real time pricing and react to emergencies in the grid.
Modules of such multi modular structure are given below:
1) Meter Data Management System.
2) outage management system
3) Mobile workforce management
4) Transformer load management
5) Geographic innformation system
MDMS system have different features for different AMI
networks. But three of the features should be there : Try to
optimize operations of utililty grid, Try to optimize operation
of utility manageement and customer engagement.The MDMS
system should have the infrastructure required for these func-
tions. It should have proper storage systems as well as data
bases for analyzing the data. The MDMS system provide help
in outages. it helps in detection of problems. Then it also helps
inn self healing.
IV. S ECURITY OF AMI
Security of AMI is of utmost importance. AMI should
secure the privacy and confidentiallity of the customers. if
someone get access to the data and profile of customers
then he/she can get very crucial inforamtion from customer
profiling. They can know about the life style and income
of the customer by analyzing their energy consumption. Tax
institutions can also get thier that whether they give tax
accoding to their income or not. The timing of coming to
house and leaving house can also be monitored from the real
time data obtained. The security of system of home can also
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be detected from this data. There are many other issues of
customer privacy which can be created due to the data of
AMI. Encryption is a solution of this problem. The pattern of
data can be reshaped to address these issues.
Cyber attacks is also a big issue in AMI environment. These
attacks can be done from anyone such as your competitors,
some dissatisfied employees other countries etc. They can
steal the data from AMI system. They can introduce such
bugs which can destabilize the network. But the AMI network
should be so sophisticated and secure that if some meter is
compromised, the attacker should not be able to fetch any info
or data from it. The utility should do arrangements to keep
the privacy of customers data. only authorize access should
be granted to the data. similarly it should be ensured that the
data sent by the meters and commands recieved by the meter
should not be tampered on the way. Similarly the essential
data should also be available in time.
Key Management system (KMS) is a very prominent system
used in the security of AMI networks. it is a kind of password.
The conventional KMS systems used only one key for all
the customers. It can be implemented through Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI) and certificate revocation list (CRL)[5].
V. E NERGY T HEFT AND AMI
There are several technical and non technical losses in
power system. These losses can occur during genration, pasing
through step up transformer and switchgear, transmission
system and utilization. Energy theft also adds up to these
losses. Power theft is a big problem in third world countries
like Pakistan. AMI will help to vanish or reduce the problem
of power theft. There are many methods of power stealing in
conventional electromechanical meters. One instance of these
tecchniques is tampering of CT. The CT is used to convert
the current from level of power lines to the level which can
be processed by meter. If number of windings of CT are
manipulated then the power consumption can be tampered.
Another example is changing the position of affected wires. It
will create phase shift and consequently consumption can be
tampered. It can also be done by grounding the neutral.
There are also many techniques of stealing in smart meters
and AMI. One technique is tampering of data in storing,
collection and transmitting process. If data loggers are used
in AMI then tampering can be reduced. The loggers count
the number of power outages and power flow inversion. Thus
if anyone wants to tamper the data he should also have to
encounter the logger. Data tampering can also be done during
data transmission. If attacker transmit false data or change the
data during transmission then tampering can be done. This
problem can be solved to some extent by using cryptography
and authentication.
VI. O PEN R EASEARCH I SSUSES AND C HALLANGES
Smart grid and AMI are very important and relatively new
ideas. A lot of work has been done in this field and there are
many research issues and challanges still to be resolved. A
large and complex system can be made but it will be of no
use after some years if it has no provision of addition of new
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devices and sensors. Therefore work should be done on the

scalability of the system. The system should be made such
that it can accomodate more devices, customers, sensors and
services with the time.
As there are large number of sensors and meters in the
AMI network and the system has to be operate in real time.
Threfore, a very big amount of data is produced which requires
high bandwidth. So a content centric networking shoulfd be
implemented in the AMI. It will ensure that the data will be
sent to only those recievers who require it and are intreseted
in the data.
Another big role of AMI is in the smart cities of future.
As every thing will be digitized in the smart cities. Therefore
work should be done to map out the solutions which integrate
the AMI networks into smart cities and its IOT networks.
Different organizations and different countries are working
on smart grids and AMI. They have different type of com-
ponents and protocols. So a standardizationn is required for
interoperability of these networks and devices.
Artificial intelligent meter is also in the pipeline. It manages
energy consumption independently. It can collect data and
power flow from sockets by SMPT approach. The socket from
where power is flowing can send its numbers and location to
the meter which can manage the things.

VII. C ONCLUSION
Switching to smart grid is need of the day and the conven-
tional power grid will be transformed to smart grid. AMI is an
important part of Smart grid. We have discussed the Smart grid
and AMI in detail in this article. Then we focused on different
modules of AMI which include smart meters, communication
and MDMS system. Smart meters are also discussed in detail.
Then we have some insight of energy theft problem. Secu-
rity of AMI is also necessary. some security protocols and
arrangements are also discussed. Then we discuss research
issues and challanges. This analysis of AMI system brings
new and promising perspectives and methodologies for future
research in smart grid and AMI.

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