Wireless continues growth mode

In a down economy, wireless is one technology that continues to grow, and the potential applications just keep expanding.
“Wireless is gaining momentum throughout the industry,” said Norm Gilsdorf, president of Honeywell Process Solutions during the Honeywell Users Group Americas Symposium in Phoenix. “It is interesting. We are seeing the wireless kits and wireless mesh networks (selling) despite the economic conditions.”
The growth means it may be cost effective to put in a wireless system that fits a bit easier into budgets.
“Wireless growth remains extremely strong this year,” said Jeff Becker, Honeywell Process Solutions’ global wireless business director. “Most project budgets are under heavy cost pressure, so wireless is a great mechanism to keep the same functionality and scope but at a lower price point.”
One of the reasons for the heightened interest in wireless may be because the ISA100 Standards Committee on Wireless Systems for Automation voted to approve the standard, ISA100.11a, “Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications.”
“Now that the ISA draft has been accepted to establish as a standard, we think that will clear the air and confusion and that will enable things, when that is finally adopted, to move forward at an even faster pace,” Gilsdorf said.
“It is a big deal for the industry,” Becker said. “We as an industry finally have an open, flexible, user-driven standard that meets all the requirements for field instrument use in process plants.”
In a nutshell, the ISA100.11a standard will provide reliable and secure wireless operation for non-critical monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, open-loop control, and closed-loop control applications. The standard will define the protocol suite, system management, gateway, and security specifications for low-data-rate wireless connectivity with fixed, portable, and moving devices supporting very limited power consumption requirements.
The application focus is to address the performance needs of applications such as monitoring and process control where latencies of 100 milliseconds are acceptable.
The standard assures operation in the presence of interference, harsh industrial environments, and with legacy non-ISA100 compliant wireless systems.
The remaining steps include approval by the ISA Standards and Practices Board and ratification by the American National Standards Institute. The committee hopes to publish the standard in August.
“It is a future-proof standard that has the legs to last us for a long time,” Becker said.
It is one thing to talk about standards and the theory behind wireless, but it is quite another to have actual working products out in the market.
Jason Urso, vice president of technology at Honeywell, unveiled, among the slew of wireless products, a manual gauge reader to wirelessly integrate manual gages at a low cost, a valve position sensor for remote valve position monitoring (for people who have multiple valves in field), and a flexline radar level gauge for accurate and reliable inventory control and custody transfer. “This flexline radar level gauge is enabled for OneWireless so it can be deployed in your tank farms” for safety issues, he said.
A simple case of wireless in action came to the forefront one year ago. One of the debates for wireless has always been about reliability, but Bryan McVicker does not have any doubt.
McVicker, a Pyrolysis engineer at ExxonMobil, came to rely upon wireless after Hurricane Ike devastated his chemical plant in September 2008. His plant was flooded in 10 feet of water, and the entire electrical infrastructure was destroyed.
“We found flares remained in service, but DCS and controls were lost,” McVicker said. “We needed to make sure basic systems were in place to address potential hazards. I needed to make sure all core business units on site were adequately handling business preservation.”
McVicker turned to a wireless implementation to quickly help with recovery.
Some of the challenges the company encountered included a weak infrastructure, no wiring, cabling, fiber optics, or permanent power. Also they were limited in people because the instrument and electrician technicians and engineers were all focused on rebuilding the plant. Within two days, Honeywell mobilized technicians and wireless stations came to the site. Within 12 days, there was an initial startup with risk-based security and controls review and instruments limited to critical services.
While the hurricane situation was clearly an emergency, and wireless came through, the technology is also working in every day environments.
“Users typically want a wireless solution to improve safety, efficiency, or reliability,” Becker said. “Wireless is almost always significantly cheaper than doing the same thing via wire, and in many cases wireless allows them to do things that were just impossible to do in the past.