AUTOMATIC METER READING DATA COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

摘要

An automatic meter reading data communication system (20) having an integrated digital encoder (22) and two-way wireless transceiver that is attachable to a wide variety of utility meters for meter data collection and information management. The integrated encoder and transceiver communicates commodity usage information over a two-way 900 MHz spread spectrum local area network (LAN) (32) to a remotely located communication node (24). The communication node transmits this data to a utility service provider (30) over a commercially available fixed wide area network (WAN) (34). The utility service provider may also request data from the communication node over the same fixed wide area network.