Smart Metering

The Industry

The metering industry has undergone three stages of evolution: mechanical meters, smart meters, and Internet of Things (IoT) meters. Traditional mechanical meters have certain cost advantages, but the manual on-site meter reading model brings many inconveniences to both enterprises and users. Later, smart water and gas meters were composed of smart IC meters, 2G meters, and a small number of self-organizing network meters.

With the development of NB-IoT technology, IoT meters not only support multiple payment models such as prepayment and post-payment, but also support tiered pricing and have remote control functions, solving many problems of traditional mechanical meters and smart meters, and comprehensively upgrading to NB-IoT smart meters. The smart meter market represented by smart gas meters and smart water meters has become a mature and rapidly developing application scenario for NB-IoT technology.

Smart Meter Solutions

As a core field when Xinyi first entered the market, NB-IoT has been the most deeply cultivated technical area . Currently, Xinyi's NB-IoT chips are widely used in IoT devices such as smart gas meters and smart water meters, and related products are constantly being upgraded. Based on the already successful XY1100 in terms of technology and market, Xinyi has launched the second-generation NB-IoT communication chip XY1200, which features ultra-high integration, ultra-low power consumption, and the ability to operate without a 32K crystal. In response to the increasing diverse demands for IoT chips in the metering industry, IoT chips that integrate scenarios and communication have emerged. These chips combine communication with other technologies such as MCU, BLE, and GNSS to meet the growing variety of metering applications. Starting from industry scenarios, Xinyi has developed the XY1200S & XY2100S chips that integrate NB and MCU, the XY1200E chip that integrates NB and BLE, and the XY3100E chip that integrates NB, BLE, and GNSS. With a rich series of application chips, it promotes the upgrading and transformation of the metering industry. 

The smart water meter developed based on SOC XY1200S of Xinyi integrates the NB-IoT communication part and the MCU part of the water meter solution board int a single chip, and has achieved large-scale commercialization. It leads in terms of cost optimization, technical maturity, and product performance. XY2100S is the industry's highest integration NB-IoT chip that does not require a 32K crystal oscillator, featuring ultra-high performance and an integrated ultra-low power MCU. It integrates multiple functions such as communication, low-power MCU, sensor analog front-end, and LCD display, further reducing the cost of intelligent solutions in the gas meter industry. XY1200E, in addition to having NB-IoT remote communication capabilities, also adds BLE near-end communication capabilities, playing a role in cost reduction and efficiency improvement in replacing infrared, meter production, and near-end upgrade and maintenance.