Wireless group goes over use cases

To get a standard fully operational, committee members need to see applications in action. That scenario is now firmly in place with the ISA SP-100 committee as it is organizing 32 completed uses cases and is planning on 43 more, Paul Sereiko, president of KAPM Strategic Wireless and member of the SP-100 committee, said today.
This week, the ISA-SP100 committee is meeting to look at proposals to solve critical issues associated with the deployment of wireless technology for industrial automation. The committee is meeting all week at ISA’s international headquarters in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Over 20 companies from around the world will present their ideas, cases, and solutions to the committee.
“A wide range of users have contributed case uses,” Sereiko said. They have quite a few case uses from the oil industry, but they are looking for more from the pharmaceutical and the metals manufacturing industries.
Some of the things he has learned so far from his database of cases is the wireless site areas are large. “The smallest is a GM plant that is 10s of acres and the largest is a wind farm in the ocean someplace that is 12 by 11 square miles,” Sereiko said. He did say, however, the wireless networks usually cover small areas of the facility.
He also found the data exchange rates cover three areas, the millisecond range; applications that need results in a second, and where an application needs results in around a minute. That is how often the variable the user is measuring changes.
He also found out about the user expectation for the battery life of a wireless device.
The user expects, he said, the battery life to be about 1-5 years.