SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING COMMUNICATION BETWEEN INTELLIGENT ELECTRONIC DEVICES VIA AN OPEN CHANNEL

• US 20100054276A1
• Filed: 11/06/2009
• Published: 03/04/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: EI Electronics LLC (Hubbell, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Electro Industries/Gaugetech
• Inventors: Slota, Fred, Wang, Wei
• Granted Patent: US 8,107,491 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/463
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y04S 40/18 Network protocols supporting networked applications, e.g. including control of end-device applications over a network

Abstract

An intelligent electronic device is configured to receive and generate data formatted in accordance with Distributed Network Protocol 3.0 (DNP 3.0) through an Ethernet TCP/IP medium. The intelligent electronic metering device for communicating over a network via an open channel includes an adapter to coupled the electronic metering device to the network and to receive a message in a protocol of the network, wherein the adapter formats the message in a serial protocol; and a processor to receive the message from the adapter, generate a response to the message and transit the response to the adapter, wherein the adapter formats the response in the protocol of the network and transmits the response over the network via an open channel.

Claims

1. An intelligent electronic metering device for simultaneously communicating to a plurality of devices over a network via a plurality of open channels, the device comprising:

an adapter to couple the electronic metering device to the network and to receive a message in a protocol of the network from at least one of the plurality of devices over at least one open channel, the message including a request formatted in at least one metering communication protocol, wherein the adapter formats the request in a serial protocol of the electronic metering device by stripping a network protocol header and footer from the message in the protocol of the network and builds a serial header and footer of the serial protocol around the request without changing the request, the protocol of the network being different than the serial protocol;

a serial channel coupling the adapter to a processor; and

the processor to receive the request from the adapter through the serial channel after the adapter formats the request in the serial protocol, generate a response to the request and transmit the response to the adapter via the serial protocol of the electronic metering device,

wherein the adapter formats the response in the protocol of the network by building a network protocol header and footer around the response without changing the response and transmits the response with the network protocol header and footer over the network via at least one open channel to the at least one of the plurality of devices.

2. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the request and response are in accordance with the Distributed Network Protocol 3.0 (DNP 3.0).

3. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the adapter is an Ethernet card.

4. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the protocol of the network is TCP/IP.

5. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the adapter strips a TCP/IP header and footer from the received message and builds a serial header and footer around the request for transmission through the serial channel.

6. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 5, wherein the processor parses the request from the serial header and footer and generates the response with the serial header and footer for transmission over the serial channel to the adapter.

7. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 6, wherein the adapter strips the serial header and footer from the response and builds a TCP/IP header and footer around the response for transmission over the network.

8. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the intelligent electronic metering device is operative to perform a function selected from a group consisting of voltage transformation, regulation and control, power-factor, and load balancing, monitoring, and protection of hardware and a combination thereof.

9. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of devices includes a SCADA master.

10. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of devices includes a remote terminal unit.

11. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of devices includes a remote fault interrogation device.

12. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of devices includes at least one second intelligent electronic metering device.

13. The intelligent electronic metering device as in claim 1, wherein the network is the Internet.

14. An intelligent electronic metering device for simultaneously communicating to a plurality of devices over a network via a plurality of open channels, the electronic metering device comprising:

an adapter to couple the electronic metering device to an Ethernet network and to receive a message in TCP/IP protocol over the network from at least one of the plurality of devices, the message formatted in accordance with Distributed Network Protocol 3.0 (DNP 3.0), wherein the adapter strips a TCP/IP header and footer from the message without changing the message and formats the message with a serial header and footer in accordance with a protocol of the electronic metering device without changing the message, the TCP/IP protocol being different from the DNP 3.0;

a serial channel coupled to the adapter and to transmit the message to a processor; and

the processor to receive the message from the serial channel after the adapter formats the message with the serial header and footer, parse the message from the serial header and footer and generate a response with the serial header and footer for transmission over the serial channel to the adapter,

wherein the adapter strips the serial header and footer from the response and formats a TCP/IP header and footer around the response without changing the response for transmission over the network via at least one open channel to the at least one of the plurality of devices.

19. The method as in claim 14, wherein the base device is selected from a group consisting of a remote terminal unit (RTU), a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) master and a combination thereof.

15. A method for providing simultaneous communications between at least one intelligent electronic metering device and a plurality of base devices over a network, the method comprising the steps:

transmitting a message from at least two of the base devices, each message including data formatted with a header and footer of a network protocol of the network;

simultaneously receiving the messages at the at least one intelligent electronic metering device and stripping the network protocol header and footer from the messages without changing the messages and reformatting each of the messages in a communication protocol of the at least one intelligent electronic metering device without changing the messages wherein the reformatting each of the messages in a communication protocol includes building a serial header and footer around each message, the network protocol being different than the communication protocol;

parsing a request from each of the messages, the request formatted in at least one metering communication protocol;

generating a response to each of the request in the communication protocol of the at least one intelligent electronic metering device;

stripping the communication protocol of the at least one intelligent electronic metering device from each of the responses and reformatting each of the responses in the network protocol without changing the responses; and

simultaneously transmitting each of the responses over the network.

16. The method as in claim 15, wherein the network is an Ethernet medium.

17. The method as in claim 16, wherein the network protocol is TCP/IP.

18. The method as in claim 17, wherein the request and response are in accordance with the Distributed Network Protocol 3.0 (DNP 3.0).

20. An electrical energy metering system for monitoring and controlling at least one intelligent electronic metering device over a network, the system comprising:

a plurality of base devices coupled to the network, each base device generates a message using a first communication protocol and transmits the message over the network in a second network protocol;

the at least one intelligent electronic metering device including an adapter to couple the device to the network and to simultaneously receive the messages using the second network protocol, wherein the adapter formats the messages using a third communication protocol by stripping a header and footer of the second network protocol from the messages and building a header and footer of the third communication protocol around the messages without changing the messages, wherein the third communication protocol is a serial protocol of the at least one intelligent electronic metering device and is different than the second network protocol;

a serial channel coupling the adapter to the processor for transmitting the messages to the processor; and

a processor to receive the messages from the adapter, generate a response to each of the messages and transit the responses to the adapter via the serial protocol of the at least one metering device,

wherein the adapter formats the responses by building a header and footer of the second network protocol around the responses without changing the response and simultaneously transmits the responses over the network via an open channel to the plurality of base devices.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the first protocol is Distributed Network Protocol 3.0 (DNP 3.0).

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the second network protocol is TCP/IP.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the network is an Ethernet medium.

24. The system as in claim 20, wherein at least one of the plurality of base devices includes a SCADA master.

25. The system as in claim 20, wherein at least one of the plurality of base devices includes a remote terminal unit.

26. The system as in claim 20, wherein at least one of the plurality of base devices includes a remote fault interrogation device.