A multi-interface ZigBee building area network(MIZBAN) for a high-traffic advanced metering infrastructure(AMI) for high-rise buildings was developed. This supports metermanagement functions such as Demand Response for smartgrid applications. To cater for the high-traffic communicationin these building area networks (BANs), a multi-interface managementframework was defined and designed to coordinate theoperation between multiple interfaces based on a newly definedtree-based mesh (T-Mesh) ZigBee topology, which supports bothmesh and tree routing in a single network. To evaluate MIZBAN,an experiment was set up in a five-floor building. Based on themeasured data, simulations were performed to extend the analysisto a 23-floor building. These revealed that MIZBAN yields animprovement in application-layer latency of the backbone and thefloor network by 75% and 67%, respectively. This paper providesthe design engineer with seven recommendations for a genericMIZBAN design, which will fulfill the requirement for demandresponse by the U.S. government, i.e. a latency of less than 0.25 s.
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