Standardizing the Industrial Wireless World
Adoption wireless in industrial applications has been much slower than the adoption curve for enterprise markets.
This gap is primarily due to 3 main factors.
Lack of a reigning standard: There is a standards war between WirelessHART and ISA100 camps. Even though there is a convergence effort between these standards underway, there are several OEMs and end-users that are adopting a wait and watch approach. Some companies have launched WirelessHART based products.
Effective convergence of these two standards can speed up wireless adoption for industrial applications. Convergence or no-convergence greatly hinges on to the end users on the plant floor. If end users fail to insist on convergence of the wireless protocol it will relegate the adoption of wireless devices on the plant floor to limited areas where it is already being applied.
Cost of deploying wireless sensor networks : WirelessHART adapters cost anywhere from $750 – over $1000. This is largely due to high development and certification cost for Class 1 Div 1 explosion proof deployment.
Manageability of various industrial wireless networks : These challenges are particularly severe within a heterogeneous multi-vendor and multi-protocol environment. The scale of deployment of industrial wireless sensor networks, i.e. size and number of deployments, will thus be limited by the configurability, maintainability, reliability, and security of installations.
The ability for end users to visualize, monitor, troubleshoot and secure their industrial wireless networks with ease can create confidence for larger deployment of industrial wireless.
Regardless of which standard wins or if convergence does not entirely take place resulting in multiple wireless technologies, manageability of these heterogeneous networks will be key in creating the adoption rate that is predicted by the industry majors. ARC recently mentioned SoftDEL’s Aerodel Director network management system as a technology that can bridge this gap.