International Symposium on Computers & Informatics (ISCI 2015)

The Design of Smart Power Meter Based on

ARM9 Microprocessor
Yujie Shi1,a Xinhui Du2,b
University of Technology,Shanxi,Taiyuan,China
University of Technology,Shanxi,Taiyuan,China
a
sy-jie@163.com bduxinhui211@163.com

Abstract.

Aiming at the disadvantages accuracy, great loss and unstableness by electronic

power meter,the smart meter system based on ARM9 microprocessor was
designed. Hardware circuit mainly includes the power acquisition module, data
storage module, power module and two-way communication module. Electric
meter software using the simplified Linux2.6.30 version of embedded
system,meanwhile, procedure code written for various modules driver and
application in Linux platform. Smart meter control panel using Qt/Embedded
graphic development tools shows the user information on current electricity
consumption and electricity rates.Experiment proved that the smart meter with
high reliability solved the existing defects of electronic watt-hour meter ,and had
wide application.
Keywords: power meter;ARM9;embedded system;two-way communication

Introduction
Watt-hour meter is the important measure tool for economic accounting and
energy saving management in power generation, transmission, distribution and
utilization. It is improving with the continuous development of modern electronic
technology, instrument technology. With the development of technology, and the
demand of the market, the watt-hour meters with high precision, multi-function,
low power consumption, are widely used in electric measurement.[1]
The diversity of function demands determines the diversity of the meters. They
can be divided into active watt-hour meter, reactive watt-hour meter, multi rate

© 2015. The authors - Published by Atlantis Press 1717

time-sharing watt-hour meter, prepaid watt-hour meter, loss watt-hour meter,
multi-function watt-hour meter and smart meter, etc. Multi rate time-sharing
watt-hour meter appears after the peak&valley price policy, meeting a great
demand. It is designed to guide the user perform time-sharing, making reasonable
and effective utilization of the electricity resources. It calculates electricity bill in
segmentation, through separately metering electric energy at different times. The
smart meter in this paper, has integrated function. It can not only achieve the
time-sharing and provide users with customized services, but also evaluate the
energy consumption of each household electrical appliances.[2] Through the
software, the saved data can be processed into statement for the single electrical
appliance, generating visual graph, providing reference for the user to formulate
reasonable energy-saving scheme. Such a powerful smart meter with reasonable
price can improve residents' energy-saving consciousness, solve the problem of
electric power shortage. It has great value on research and practice, and positive
significance to promote social development.[3]

System overview

Structure design of overall system. The smart meter in this paper, is mainly used
for residents indoor. It has time-sharing metering function, to adapt to the current
time-sharing price policy in the domestic regions. First, it realizes the collection
and storage of the electric energy data. Then, it adds time memory, to determine
the division of time, providing precondition for time-sharing metering. In addition,
smart meter has communication interface, for the two-way data communication
between the user and Power Grid Corp collecting system. The smart meter is
mainly composed of electricity detection module, external power supply module,
S3C2440 ARM9 core processor, LCD display module, memory module and other
peripheral circuit. The electricity detection module takes special energy metering
chip ADE7758 as the core, to achieve the data such as active power, reactive
power, voltage, current and frequency. Main control part is samsung S3C2440
processor with appropriate peripheral module circuit. The data obtained are

1718
processed through the processor and displayed on the LCD screen, for users to
view at any time. The communication module uses Ethernet to realize two-way
communication between the smart meter and the Power Grid Corp collecting
system.[4]
Operation mechanism of system. Three-phase load circuit includes phase
A, phase B, phase C and neutral wire N. When starting the load, the current and
voltage via the lines are the electrical parameters in the meter. The collected
voltage, current signals via attenuation filter circuit to metering chip ADE7758.
When the metering chip port receive the corresponding signal, after the internal
filtering, differential and integral operations, it saves all kinds of parameters in the
corresponding register. The metering of power in the whole system is mainly
performed by the CPU. It reads data from the corresponding register in the
metering chip ADE7758, in fixed time, then obtains the value through calculation.
The communication between the main controller and the metering chip is
performed through the SPI interface. In case of abnormal state (power off),
ADE7758 will perform interruption on MCU through the interrupt request IRQ.

Circuit design of main module

Design of acquisition circuit. The metering module is chip ADE7758 with

appropriate peripheral circuit. The value range of the input electrical parameter
allowed by the chip is limited, so attenuation filtering on the voltage signal and
current signal collected from the three-phase load circuit is required. The sampling
of voltage signal and current signal are completed by the transformer. The
sampling circuit in A phase is shown in Fig. 1. R4, R5, R11, R16 are the anti
aliasing filter networks for each port, and each input port has four groups of
inversion diodes, to constitute protection circuit of each line. The sampling circuit
design of Phase B and C is the same with the phase A. The input signal of IAP and
IAN channels should be voltage signal, so the resistor R1 get voltage directly from
the secondary side of the current transformer. The value R1 get is related to the

1719
output value of current transformer secondary side.[5]The acquisition circuit is
shown in the Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 The acquisition circuit

Interface design of ADE7758 and MCU. In sampling circuit, the
transformer can not only transform grade, but also perform electrical isolation. It
separates the high voltage on the primary side and weak voltage on the secondary
side. In this case, it can connect ADE7758 SPI interface (DOUT, SCLK, DIN, CS)
with MCU, through the 1kΩ resistance. The APCF and VARCF pulse interfaces
of ADE7758, need the optoelectronic isolation unit TLP421 to realize
anti-jamming. Optical coupling can realize the input and output electrical isolation,
and oneway signal transmission. It has good insulation ability and
anti-interference ability. And light coupling input end has low impedance device
of current working model, making it strong common mode rejection capability.
Interface design of ADE7758 and MCU. In sampling circuit, the
transformer can not only transform grade, but also perform electrical isolation. It
separates the high voltage on the primary side and weak voltage on the secondary
side. In this case, it can connect ADE7758 SPI interface (DOUT, SCLK, DIN, CS)
with MCU, through the 1kΩ resistance. The APCF and VARCF pulse interfaces
of ADE7758, need the optoelectric isolation unit TLP421 to realize anti-jamming.

1720
Optical coupling can realize the input and output electrical isolation, and oneway
signal transmission. It has good insulation ability and anti-interference ability.
And light coupling input end has low impedance device of current working model,
making it has strong common mode rejection capability.
Design of storage module. The storage resources on chip in the embedded
system is limited, which can't meet the requirements of system development. So to
establish an efficient storage system is the basic work in embedded system
development. At present, NOR Flash memory is expensive, and the volume is
small. So NAND Flash+SDRAM plan is acceptable, as shown in the figure. Users
can start and guide the system from the NAND Flash, and perform the main
program in the SDRAM. S3C2440 meet the requirements of this plan, because it
has an internal SRAM buffer (Steppingstone). When starting the system, the first
4 kb byte code in the NAND Flash memory will be automatically loaded into the
Steppingstone, and automatically execute the code, starting the system in the
NAND Flash. In order to manage the requirements of storage on speed and data
width, S3C2440 uses storage controller to provide necessary storage control
signal for the access and management of memory not on the chip.[6]
Design of communication interface. The existing peak&valley timesharing
meter, prepaid watt-hour meter and the watt-hour meter with infrared meter
reading and long-distance meter reading function, can not meet the requirements
of the real-time interaction in the smart grid. They are not real smart meters. Under
the smart grid architecture, the smart meter should have the metering function in
real time, to provide power information with timing mark. It should not only
provide useful information in real time for the high efficiency and energy saving
management in power grid, but also have the function of two-way communication,
which is the foundation of interaction.Two-way communication is required for
smart meter. But S3C2440 has no Ethernet interface. In order to make S3C2440
possess the function of Ethernet, it is necessary to expand the network card
interface. This system uses DM9000. This chip can be directly connected to the
ISA bus, and it can also be connected with S3C2440. DM9000 has only two ports:

1721
address and data. The address port is used to enter the address of internal register.
The data port is used to read and write in a register. CMD pin is used to
differentiate between the two ports. When the pin is 0, DM9000 transmission is
for the register address. When the pin is 1, the transmission is to read and write
data. SA8, SA9 are connected to high level, SA4 - SA7 are connected to low level.
AEN is connected to nGCS4 pin. Then, the DM port base address: 0x20000300,
CMD pin is connected to the ADDR2 pin, to define the addresses of DM9000
ports, address port: 0x20000300 and data port: 0x20000304.

Design of system software

Embedded Operating System (EOS) is the control center of software and

hardware resources.[7] EOS is responsible for the allocation and scheduling of all
the software and hardware resource in system. It controls and coordinates
concurrent activities. This system takes the embedded Linux as operating system.
The source code of Linux is open, and follows the GPL rules. The system selects
Linux 2.6.30 version, and perfroms system trimming to fit for the embedded
applications in this system. At the same time, in the Linux platform, it writes
drivers and applications for each module. Meter control panel uses Qt/Embedded
graphic development tools. The panel displays the current electricity consumption
and electricity rates. Electricity metering module sends electricity information
through the SPI interface to S3C2440. After data processing, the final information
will be displayed on the LCD screen.[8]When the system detects abnormal
condition, the control panel displays alarm signals and possible causes. The whole
system software flow diagram is shown in the Fig. 2.

1722
 Fig. 2 whole system software flow diagram

Conclusion

This article introduces in detail the design scheme of the smart meter based on
ARM9 microprocessor. Along with the gradually completed power grid
reconstruction and the smart grid construction, the power terminal intelligence
becomes the trend. The demand for smart meter will also get increased
significantly. Smart meter system based on embedded technology has high
reliability, less error, strong controllability, fast data communication, lower cost. It
will get wide promotion and application.

References

1723
[1]Xinhui Du,Qian Wang,The Design of Multi-Functional Power Meter Based on
ADE7758 ,Electrical Engineering[J] 2012.2:42-44(in Chinese)
[2] Yixin Yu, Wenpeng Luan.Smart grid and its implementation[J].Proceedings
of the CSEE,2009,29(34): 1-8(in Chinese).
[3] Kai Zhang,Xinhui Du,The Research of Smart Meter Two-Way
CommunicationBased on Advanced Metering Infrastructure,2012(in Chinese)
[4] Bobo Wang,Zheng Wang,ARM9 learning manual[M],2011(in Chinese)
[5] AD [Analog Devices].ADE7758:Polyphase Multifunction Energy Metering
IC with per Phase Active and Reactive Powers[Z]. http://www.analog.com/,
2010.
[6] V.Vapnik,AnOverview of Statistical Learning Theory [J]. IEEE Transactions
on Neural Networks,1999, 10 (5): 988- 999
[7] Zongquan Deng,Xiangdong Jiang,Design of automotive intellectual control
meter system based on embedded Linux system[J],microcomputer & its
applications,2014(in Chinese)
[8] Liang Chen,Fangcheng Lv,Research of Real-time Energy Measurement and
Bidirectional communication Smart Meter, Proceedings of the CSEE,2011(in
Chinese)

1724