The Hitchhiker's guide to choosing the compression algorithm for your smart meter data

Abstract

Smart meters are increasingly penetrating the market, resulting in enormous data volumes to be communicated. In many cases, embedded devices collect the metering data and transmit them wirelessly to achieve cheap and facile deployment. Bandwidth is yet scarce and transmission occupies the spectrum. Smart meter data should hence be compressed prior to transmission. Here, solutions for personal computers are not applicable, as they are too resource-demanding. In this paper, we propose four lossless compression algorithms for smart meters. We analyze processing time and compression gains and compare the results with five off-the-shelf compression algorithms. We show that excellent compression gains can be achieved when investing a moderate amount of memory. A discussion of the suitability of the algorithms for different kinds of metering data is presented.