System for firmware upgrade in ami and method thereof

A system for firmware upgrade in an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), comprising:

• a remote server including a database to store a firmware image file and a security module to generate a digital signature and an activation code;
• a data concentrator connected to the remote server, including:
• a verification module to verify the firmware image file from the remote server using the digital signature;
• and
• a broadcasting module to broadcast a predetermined number or more of encoding symbols generated from the firmware image file, to obtain minimum retransmission contents based on a receiving status of the encoding symbols, and further to broadcast new encoding symbols, wherein the amount of which matches the minimum retransmission contents;
• and
• at least a meter connected to the data concentrator to receive the encoding symbols, the meter including:
• a forward error correction (FEC) decoder to decode the encoding symbols from the data concentrator and recover the firmware image file based on the encoding symbols;
• and
• a verification module to check the status of completion of the firmware image file recovered by the FEC decoder, and to obtain the activation code generated by the remote server from the data concentrator, the activation code after successful verification being used to drive firmware upgrade of the meter.