Technique for reading energy-saving meters at the smart meter level

A gateway (1) intended to communicate wirelessly with a communication module (7) comprising a receiver (18) exhibiting successive awake windows periodically repeated with a period of duration Tr, the gateway comprising:

• a clock (16) configured to periodically trigger a radiobroadcasting of a synchronization signal (17) in successive radiobroadcasting periods, the radiobroadcasting period exhibiting a duration Tx,
• an emitter (10) configured to radiobroadcast the synchronization signal (1), the synchronization signal being emitted during an emission window (28) exhibiting a defined duration Dx within each radiobroadcasting period,
• a receiver (11) configured to receive a data message (20) from an emitter of the communication module (7) subsequent to an overlap between an awake window (29) of the receiver (18) of the communication module (7) and a said emission window (28),
• characterized in that:
• the duty cycle DC=Dx/Tx between the duration of the emission window Dx of the synchronization signal and the duration of the radiobroadcasting period Tx is less than 50%, the duration Tx of the radiobroadcasting period is Tx=Tr·(1+DC).

A communication module (7) able to transmit data to a gateway (1), the communication module comprising:

• a receiver (18),
• a clock configured to periodically trigger the activation of the receiver in activation periods during an awake window (29), the duration of the awake window being less than 1% of the duration Tr of the activation period,
• the receiver (18) being able to receive a synchronization radio signal (17) emitted by a gateway (1) during an overlap of an awake window (29) with an emission window (28) of a synchronization signal (17) emitted by a gateway (1),
• a memory comprising data to be transmitted,
• an emitter (19) configured to radiobroadcast a data message (20) in response to the reception of the synchronization radio signal by the receiver.