February 15, 2013 - WHSIM announces its WirelessHART Plant Simulator. The simulator contains an actual device stack in each simulated device, so the user can see how the network joins and performs. Optimizations can be performed on the network that can be validated before they are implemented, thus reducing the installation time and costs.
With its simple and intuitive user interface, the WirelessHART Simulator allows the user to upload an aerial photo of a plant and design obstacles on top of it by using the concept of ”RF Penalty Zones” (i.e., a tank would be modelled as a circular RF penalty zone with 0% penetration) to obtain a realistic simulation of the RF environment in the plant. The WirelessHART Simulator offers information about path and data reliability, RF diversity, and an estimation of the power consumption for each node. The WirelessHART Simulator also offers the possibility to optimize the network, to chose the best position for an Access Point, to add repeaters that will offer RF coverage and RF path diversity to all the sensors.
Optimizations can also be performed to even out battery usage in all the sensors. The user can validate these optimizations in terms of data reliability and power usage.