To meet the growing demand for a feature-rich yet simple design for developing smart meters, Arizona-based Microchip has announced a family of 32bit microprocessors and a power line communications (PLC) modem.

The design complexity of smart meters continues to evolve as different communications are integrated into the framework and as regulatory compliance requirements are mandated. The MCU is a smart metering platform targeting industrial IoT, commercial and industrial metering applications. The platform has up to 200MHz operation and scalability with up to 560kbyte of memory (SRAM).

To provide developers with flexibility to scale their products, the PIC32CXMT family is offered in three variants based on a single Arm Cortex-M4F core, a dual Arm Cortex-M4 core and a system-on-chip (SoC). The MPL460 PLC modem integrates the line driver for signal amplification, which reduces the bill of materials and maintains a signal injection efficiency above 40% due to its class-D topology.

The PLC modem helps increase efficiency and reliability based on power delivered to the load and power taken from the supply, resulting in an overall reduction in consumption from the source during transmission.

“The new PIC32CXMT MCUs, combined with a MPL460 PLC modem, deliver an unmatched level of scalability and performance to support the architecture of a wide range of meters,” said Kourosh Boutorabi, director of Microchip’s smart energy business unit. “This second generation of our highly successful metering products demonstrates our commitment to offering a broad portfolio of SoCs that enable a flexible and secure smart metering platform with options to select from best-in-class metrology to leading-edge connectivity.”

The platform provides several transceivers including a radio and phy, a PLC and phy, or the option to select a PLC plus RF hybrid. There is also an option for a metrology and communications software suite that is compliant with Ansi and IEC metering standards up to 0.2 per cent accuracy. It also supports standards for wired and wireless communications, such as G3-PLC and Prime.

As smart metering devices are connected, the need for security is critical in any design. The MCUs have standard and proprietary on-chip hardware security features to improve performance and memory use.

The device is supported by Microchip’s MPLab Harmony v3 embedded software framework. Other resources include IAR Systems, Arm, Keil Development Environment, G3-PLC and Prime software.

The PIC32CXMT family and MPL460 are sampling on a limited basis.