ISA 2012 Automation Week
Track: Wireless
Thursday, 27 September, 3:15-4:45 pm, Room 205A
Dick Caro CMC Associates There has been great interest in wireless process control field instrumentation for several years, and beginning in 2003, suppliers have been shipping products. The problem was there were no standards, meaning each manufacturer’s product required a unique connection to host control systems. ISA first addressed this situation with the formation of the ISA100 committee in 2005 with an objective to produce a standard wireless communications protocol for process control field instrumentation. This work was completed in 2009. However, the HART Communications Foundation, believing the ISA standards work would take many years to complete, in 2006 began developing its own revision 7 to the HART protocol with a wireless option, completing this work in 2008.
WirelessHART products soon emerged, and the wireless specification was submitted to IEC for standardization. Now there were two standards for the same market: WirelessHART and ISA-100 Wireless. In 2008, ISA100 formed a subcommittee charged with charting the course for convergence between the two standards: WirelessHART Convergence Subcommittee. The paper presented by Dick Caro in the Wireless Track of Automation Week gives a summary of the failed attempt to develop a method to converge the two wireless standards, both directed at the same market, and a third standard that has also emerged to further cloud the issue.
