For Peter Kalantzis, IP fits his wireless sensor networks like a glove. The director of engineering at Fast Heat, Inc. says the IP protocol beat out others — the field includes contenders such as ZigBee and WirelessHART — as the go-to connection method.
Fast Heat is looking to establish itself in the energy management sector with a sensor-based offering that gives industrial customers granular data on how they consume energy — down to individual pieces of factory equipment. The company dates to 1957 and has a long history in the temperature sensor business.
Kalantzis and his employer have joined a growing chorus in manufacturing and technology circles calling for WSNs to run on the same protocol that runs the Internet. As the thinking goes, almost all data these days ends up on an IP-based corporate backbone, so why not use IP all the way to the edge of the network, where sensors reside?
Fast Heat uses Arch Rock’s technology as the wireless network backbone for its sensor-based application. “The proprietary stuff is good,” Kalantzis says, “but we found that the open architecture of IP-based just made it that much simpler for us to access and get up and running.”
The IP approach fits well with Fast Heat’s application, a monitoring product that sends data “in minute chunks,” he says. “We don’t deal in milliseconds. I suppose if we did, we might have to look at that a little closer.”
That’s where IP has its work cut out for it in industrial circles, observers say. Manufacturing plants operate within tight tolerances, and a sensor working within a control system must always be online and able to transmit data quickly. Otherwise, the line stops.
Roland Acra, CEO of Arch Rock, a big backer of IP-based WSNs, says the automation vendors will eventually convert to IP. “I think they’re coming over gradually,” he says, noting that Emerson Electric has signed up with the IPSO Alliance, a trade group promoting the use of IP. Acra says Emerson will soon be joined by three to four other supplier companies not normally identified with IP.