The CGR 1000 Series Routers are ruggedized, modular platforms on which utilities and other industrial customers can build a highly secure, reliable, and scalable communication infrastructure. The products are certified to meet harsh environmental standards. They support a variety of communications interfaces, such as Ethernet, serial, cellular, WiMAX, radio-frequency (RF) mesh, and power line communications (PLC).

The Cisco CGR 1000 Series run Cisco IOS® Software, the operating system powering millions of Cisco routers worldwide. Grid operators gain the benefits of Cisco IOS Software's wide variety of Layer 3 services such as FlexVPN. The distributed intelligence capabilities of the CGR 1000 Series allow customers to run 3rd party applications such as application protocol translation, distributed data processing and filtering, and application security on the routers dire ctly leveraging Cisco IOx - an open, extensible environment for hosting applications at the network edge.

The Cisco CGR 1000 Series includes two platforms, shown in Figure 1: The Cisco 1120 Connected Grid Router (CGR 1120), which is designed for indoor deployments; and the Cisco 1240 Connected Grid Router (CGR 1240), which is a weatherproof router in a NEMA Type 4 enclosure for outdoor deployments.

Connected Grid Field Area Network Solution and CGR 1000 Series

Utilities all over the world are transitioning their grids from transmission to consumption. Regulatory mandates are driving initiatives around smart metering, grid reliability, and the integration of solar and wind farms into the distribution grid. The situation imposes a unique set of challenges for utilities to build a bidirectional communications field area network (FAN) that enables these diverse applications and also scales across millions of endpoints.

The Cisco Connected Grid FAN solution has been specifically developed to meet these challenges, using design principles from industry-leading Cisco GridBlocks™ architecture. Under the GridBlocks architecture, a typical communications network for the distribution grid is a two-tier architecture with a neighborhood area network (NAN) and a wide area network (WAN).

The NAN provides network connectivity to endpoints such as smart meters, street lights, and other environmental sensors. These endpoints form a mesh network based on radio-frequency (RF) or power-line communications (PLC) technologies. The mesh network is aggregated at a CGR 1000 mounted on poletops or in secondary distribution substations. The CGR 1000 can also aggregate locally connected devices for distribution automation (DA). The WAN tier provides network connectivity from the CGR 1000 to the utility's control center over a public cellular network, a utility-owned (private) WiMAX or WiFi network, or an Ethernet fiber network.