As India accelerates its national smart metering initiative, which has the ambitious goal of targeting 250 million smart meters by 2027, utility providers are increasingly focused on ensuring infrastructure performance aligns with stringent service level agreements (SLAs).The SLA requirement for India’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) include that the system must ensure that 99.9% of the commands sent to the meters are successfully executed within a specified time frame. This timeframe is typically within 15 minutes of the initial request. Two operational benchmarks are especially critical: low-latency responsiveness for on-demand meter operations and timely network recovery following power outages.

At Silicon Labs, we have conducted extensive validation of our Wi-SUN solution within a 1,000-node internal testbed. These evaluations provide compelling evidence that our implementation not only satisfies key SLA criteria on paper but is also well-positioned for large-scale deployments in the Indian context.

Addressing AMI India’s SLA Expectations for Low-Latency Operations

One of the primary drivers of smart metering in India is support for prepaid energy models, where consumers recharge their meters through cloud-based platforms. In such scenarios, the system must ensure that remote reconnect commands are executed within three minutes for Individual meters, minimizing customer wait times and ensuring service continuity. Additionally, the network must support ping response times under 3 seconds and on-demand meter reads within 60 seconds.

Testing conducted on our Wi-SUN network testbed has shown that:

• Ping response times and on-demand reads are consistently within SLA thresholds.
• Remote connect/disconnect operations meet the 3-minute requirement across individual meters and 15-minute requirement for group-based commands.
• CoAP-based communication shows 98.5% success on first request and 100% success after a retry.

These performance metrics were sustained even after scaling the Wi-SUN network from 450 to 1,000 nodes in a single day, highlighting the system’s robustness and seamless scalability.

Enabling Resilient Wi-SUN Network Recovery Post-Outage

Frequent power interruptions in India mean that smart meter networks need to recover swiftly and autonomously. The “First Breath” SLA specifies that smart meters must resume communication with the head-end system (HES) shortly after power restoration. Silicon Labs has succeeded in meeting the stricter SLAs here, as well.

Some protocols rely on deterministic topologies with predefined parent-child relationships. Wi-SUN, however, leverages dynamic routing, which offers adaptability but may require time for neighbor discovery and path reformation. This introduces complexity in achieving rapid recovery across large mesh networks.

Despite these challenges, Silicon Labs’ Wi-SUN testbed demonstrated 99% network reformation within allowed timelines as per India SLA following a complete power cycle and Gradual and reliable reconnection of nodes without manual intervention.

While not all nodes meet the sub-three-minute threshold, the recovery profile aligns with practical expectations for mesh networks of this scale and complexity.

Wi-SUN Network Testing Demonstrated Stability and System-Level Readiness

Our internal testing has validated the long-term stability, scalability, and operational efficiency of the Wi-SUN network. Over several months, the network has operated continuously, handling traffic from 1,000 nodes while supporting dynamic additions and resets without service degradation.

This sustained performance is a strong indicator of the platform’s maturity and its readiness to support utility-scale deployments.

Certification and Ecosystem

Silicon Labs continues to play a leading role in the Wi-SUN Alliance and broader certification ecosystem with our FG25 SoC fully certified at the PHY level and our Wi-SUN stack is certified for FAN 1.1 (Core and High Performance), functioning as both a field function node (FFN) and a border router (BR). We are actively contributing to India-specific test beds, enabling localized certification pathways, reinforcing our commitment to interoperability, regulatory compliance, and global best practices.

Why Silicon Labs’ Wi-SUN Solution is Ideal for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in India

With proven performance in latency, recovery, scalability, and certification readiness, Silicon Labs’ Wi-SUN solution demonstrates clear alignment with India’s smart metering SLAs. Backed by robust engineering and a growing ecosystem of customers and partners, we are well-positioned to support next-generation energy networks — both in India and around the world.