The smart metering infrastructure may become one of the key elements in efficiently managing energy in smart cities. At the same time, traditional measurement record collection is performed by manual methods, which raises cost, safety, and accuracy issues. This paper proposes an innovative SMI architecture based on an unmanned aerial vehicle swarm organizing itself for the autonomous data collection in smart metering infrastructure with scalability and cost-effectiveness while minimizing risks. We design an architecture-based comprehensive system with various phases of operation, communication protocols, and robust failure-handling mechanisms to ensure reliable operations. We further perform extensive simulations in maintenance of precise formations during flight, efficient data collection from smart meters, and adaptation to various failure scenarios. Importantly, we analyze the energy consumption of the proposed system in both drone flight operations and network communication. We now propose a battery sizing strategy and provide an estimate of the operational lifetime of the swarm, underlining the feasibility and practicality of our approach. Our results show that UAV swarms have great potential to revolutionize smart metering and to bring a further brick to greener and more resilient smart cities.

翻译：智能计量基础设施可能成为智慧城市中高效管理能源的关键要素之一。与此同时，传统的计量记录采集通过人工方法进行，这带来了成本、安全性和准确性问题。本文提出了一种创新的智能计量基础设施架构，该架构基于自组织无人机群组，用于在智能计量基础设施中实现具有可扩展性和成本效益的自主数据采集，同时最大限度地降低风险。我们设计了一个基于架构的综合性系统，包含多个操作阶段、通信协议和鲁棒的故障处理机制，以确保可靠运行。我们进一步进行了广泛的仿真，涉及飞行期间保持精确编队、从智能电表高效采集数据以及适应各种故障场景。重要的是，我们分析了所提出系统在无人机飞行操作和网络通信两方面的能耗。我们提出了一种电池容量配置策略，并提供了对群组运行寿命的估计，从而强调了我们方法的可行性和实用性。我们的结果表明，无人机群组在革新智能计量方面具有巨大潜力，并为构建更绿色、更具弹性的智慧城市添砖加瓦。