Master thesis: an External Short Messaging Entity for DONG Energy

Context

DONG Energy relied on SMS to communicate with field devices and metering, and needed a new gateway where stability and reliability came first. My master thesis at DTU Informatics, the Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, set out to design and build that gateway as a working prototype.

What I did

I established solution scenarios from DONG Energy’s business requirements and known methodologies, weighing commercial off-the-shelf, joint venture, and component implementation. The conclusion was to use a commercial protocol on top of a robust application architecture. Because message flow is the core of any communication platform, I built a prototype with a custom-designed message queue, taking it from design ideas through to implementation, and created test scenarios to measure performance and stability against DONG Energy’s existing solution. It was not only my thesis: at Ørsted it ran as a project I managed as project manager, with steering group meetings to keep the stakeholders aligned.

Outcome

The stability tests showed a stable and reliable message flow for the new prototype. The work also produced a new equation to calculate delay on SMS messages, something DONG Energy could use directly for its operational needs. The gateway became the basis for the SMS work I carried on in the business.