Address cross-wire faults in e-metering networks

Electricity metering (e-metering) for commercial and residential applications is heavily dependent on long-haul, differential data-transmission networks based on the TIA/EIA-485 standard commonly referred to as RS-485. In order to overcome the large ground-potential differences often encountered between remotely located bus nodes, each node is galvanically isolated, with regards to signal and supply lines, from the local e-metering circuitry.

The e-metering network is a typical master/slave system in which a host processor in the master node (located in a control centre) sequentially addresses multiple slave nodes (located in the individual end customer's premises) along the bus.

With a single network comprising up to 60 nodes typically, the potential for unintentionally cross-wiring the two conductors of the twisted-pair bus cable can be rather high, if neither preventive measures during network installation nor corrective measures during network operation are applied.

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Originally published by Texas Instruments at www.ti.com as "Correcting cross-wire faults in modern e-metering networks".