Abstract—The M-Bus protocol (EN13757) is in widespread use for metering applications within home area and neighborhood area networks, but lacks a strict specification. This may lead to incompatibilities in real-life installations and to problems in the deployment of new M-Bus networks. This paper presents the development of a novel testbed to emulate physical Metering Bus (M-Bus) networks with different topologies and to allow the flexible verification of real M-Bus devices in real-world scenarios. The testbed is designed to support device manufacturers and service technicians in test and analysis of their devices within a specific network before their installation. The testbed is fully programmable, allowing flexible changes of network topologies, cable lengths and types. It is easy to use, as only the master and the slaves devices have to be physically connected. This allows to autonomously perform multiple tests, including automated regression tests. The testbed is available to other researchers and developers. We invite companies and research institutions to use this M-Bus testbed to increase the common knowledge and real-world experience.

Index Terms—M-BUS, smart metering, bus emulation, wire emulation

Cite: Oliver Kehret, Manuel Schappacher, and Axel Sikora, “A Network Emulation Testbed for Complex Topologies of Wired M-Bus According to EN13757," Journal of Communications, vol. 11, no. 9, pp. 819-826, 2016. Doi: 10.12720/jcm.11.9.819-826