Wireless M-bus in industrial IoT: Technology overview and prototype implementation

During the past 15 years, the Internet revolution has redefined the industry landscape. The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing our lives by provisioning a wide range of novel applications that leverage the ecosystem of "smart" and highly heterogeneous devices. This is expected to dramatically transform manufacturing, energy, agriculture, transportation, and other industrial sectors. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) brings along a new wave of Internet evolution and will offer unprecedented opportunities in Machine Type Communications (MTC) - intelligent industrial products, processes, and services that communicate with each other and with people over the global network. This paper delivers a technology overview of the currently utilized Wireless M-Bus communication protocol within the IIoT landscape together with describing a demonstration prototype development. In our trial implementation, the IQRF modules are utilized to be compatible with the protocol of interest. The constructed WM-Bus receiver is further integrated as part of a complex MTC Gateway, which receives the MTC data via a secure communication channel from various types of smart-metering devices.