The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has adopted Wi-SUN Alliance FAN (Field Area Network) specification as the national standard for India’s smart meter RF communication networks.
With this adoption, the Bureau is foreseeing the enablement of interoperable, multi-service and secure wireless communications networks for government, utilities, service providers and enterprises in India.
Under the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme, which was introduced in July 2021, a nationwide rollout of more than 250 million smart meters is currently underway, while also large-scale smart city development is underway with the government having allocated support towards the development of 100 smart cities in the country.
“The adoption of the Wi-SUN Alliance wireless communications specification as a standard for India by the BIS is a clear signal that the national standards body recognises the role that wireless mesh technology will play in driving the growth of smart cities in India and the rapid rollout of smart meter projects over the next few years,” commented Phil Beecher, President and CEO of the Wi-SUN Alliance.
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Reji Pillai, President of the India Smart Grid Forum and Chairman of the Global Smart Energy Federation, said the Forum has been closely associated with the Wi-SUN Alliance for over a decade and described India’s adoption of the Wi-SUN FAN as a great achievement.
“In India we should ideally make it mandatory for all smart metering and smart city applications which will ensure interoperability between different systems and reduce total cost of ownership of all applications.”
Wi-SUN’s wireless mesh technology is currently supporting the Smart City Living Lab project in Hyderabad, a partnership between the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H), the government of Telangana and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology India that serves as a test bed for smart city technologies.
The Wi-SUN Alliance is already running the Wi-SUN FAN PHY certification programme for the Indian frequency band (865-868MHz), with testing at TUV Rheinland Bangalore.
The Alliance is also working to start the certification programme for the Wi-SUN FAN specification. The test setup available for Wi-SUN FAN certification can also be used for IEEE 2857 and BIS standard IS 18010 (Part4/Sec1) compliance testing and verification.
The Wi-SUN FAN specification is aimed to support the specification and rollout of large-scale outdoor networks including smart metering projects, smart grids, street lighting and other IoT applications.
Wi-SUN Alliance member companies based in India include Cisco, Renesas, Silicon Labs, Texas Instruments, Exegin and CyanConnode.
