Wireless networking has more than one way to go

“The most useful analogy to portray what has become the future of wireless automation in the industrial space is cell phone technology with its grid of receivers and transmitting towers,” said Soroush Amidi.
It is a wireless web, a mesh network of signaling devices connecting one another and relaying intelligence hither and yon.
“So it is with this OneWireless technology,” he said. Amidi is manager of wireless products at Honeywell, and he spoke Monday at the company’s annual users’ group conference in Phoenix.
It is a unique technology in that the nodes handle three sorts of transmissions including WiFi, ISA100.11a, and field I/Os.
WiFi is in many products using IEEE 802.11 standards. Its certification warrants interoperability between different wireless devices. Most personal computer operating systems, many game consoles, laptops, smart phones, printers, and other peripherals support WiFi.
The ISA100.11a is for industrial wireless users and operators. It provides for reliable and secure wireless operation for non-critical monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, open loop control, and closed loop control applications.
It sees to the performance needs of applications such as monitoring and process control where latencies on the order of 100 milliseconds are acceptable.
“The key benefits of this technology are that it’s ready for control applications, it’s easy to use, it lowers the cost of installation versus a hardwire network by 20-30%, it has the scalability to expand to 40 receivers, and it’s universal in that it embraces all the key existing wireless protocols,” he said.
Amidi also reported on the Wireless Compliance Institute.
The ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute, of which Honeywell is a part, works on the effective implementation and understanding of the planned ISA100 universal family of industrial wireless standards through:
-- Compliance testing programs
-- Associated market awareness
-- Technical support to users and developers
—Nicholas Sheble