News&Topics

TOYOKEIKI Co., Ltd. developed "LTE-R" (Rindow for LTE)

December 19, 2017

TOYOKEIKI Co., Ltd. (Matsumoto City, president & CEO Yasuhide Tsuchida) had been developing the system to connect water meters and gas meters to the Internet, and to realize remote meter control, reading, and monitoring in order to prepare for the "IoT society", sometimes called 4th Industrial Revolution.
Finally, it has developed the device "LTE-R" (Rindow for LTE). “LTE-R” takes advantage of LTE Release 13, which is one of LPWA (low power and wideband radio technology).

Since the newly-developed "LTE-R" adopts the LTE Release 13, it conforms to one of the cell phone communication standards “LTE” and can directly access conventional base station of a cell phone. For this reason, there is no need of the installation of the gateway, there is no restriction on the installation conditions, and meters can communicate in anywhere mobile phone can communicate.
In addition, by adopting LTE Release 13, they can communicate for 10 years with a battery, so that they can be installed anywhere.

With the cooperation of a mobile phone operator, SOFTBANK CORP., TOYOKEIKI has already begun a pilot operation in an area where the base station has changed software specification to LTE 13 (e-DRX), so that it got a positive outcome. After mobile-service providers have changed the software of their base stations to e-DRX, TOYOKEIKI is going to start selling the product nationwide. Since the communication standard can also realize the connection with existing wireless meter reading terminals, it will be a new alternative model to the device "PHS-R" based on the current PHS communication, which is used such as for collective meter reading of condominiums. Communication charges are expected to be drastically reduced by adopting LTE-R.

In addition, TOYOKEIKI has "Multicenter", which receives meter reading data on water and gas meters from all over the country and emergency notices based on the data. Now “Multicenter” receives such information of 200,000 households. Along with the development of LTE-R, "Multicenter" has also developed software compatible with the LTE-R and has created the environment that makes it work properly.