Honeywell talks wireless

As wireless was a focus of ISA EXPO 2006, the technology is having a major impact at Honeywell’s EMEA User Group meeting in Seville, Spain.
While it is not the only topic at the meeting, wireless mesh networking continues to get heavy play.
“What happens when a company gets serious about technology look at what happened when Microsoft got serious about the Internet, said Paul Orzeske, Honeywell’s vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). “Honeywell has been in the wireless business for many, many years. We have taken wireless technology and applied it to industrial wireless. We have 30 million installed sensors today. We have more than 400 dedicated engineers working on wireless technologies.”
What is the next generation for wireless? Orzeske sees two areas, one will be complying with wireless standards and the other will be the development of the next wireless infrastructure. “There are those that would say wireless will be for data acquisition and not control. Not at Honeywell. We don’t feel like something is able to be used in absolute control we don’t think it is ready for a sensor.”
Part of that infrastructure is building a wireless mesh network, which Honeywell has a version that it is pushing hard. “This is a self healing, self propagating growing mesh you can lay over your operation or a portion of your operations,” Orzeske said.
There are six critical features of the mesh network:
• Single integrated mesh network
• High speed, ready for control
• Control enabled architecture
• Predictable long battery life
• Scalable. Up to 30,000 sensors in a network
• End-to-end industrial security
The next step is getting a wireless standard approved in a timely fashion. In the mean time Honeywell, along with other companies, will ship wireless products before any wireless standard gains approval. Industry watchers are talking about a clash of titans where two companies want to push through their ideas for what the standard should say. Which company will win? Who cares. In the end, the only winner should be end users.
Talk to me.