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Industry Groups Collaborate on Wireless Gateway Standard Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox
Posted on Monday, October 01, 2007 4:55:00 PM |
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As wireless technology takes root on the plant floor, three leading industry organizations are banding together to build a wireless standard for moving information between instrumentation and control networks. The Fieldbus Foundation, the HART Communication Foundation, and Profibus Nutzerorganisation e.V. will develop a specification for a common interface to a wireless gateway. The effort, built on the Wireless HART technology found in the HART 7 specification released last month, will also encompass the emerging ISA SP100.11a standard, scheduled for release next year, the group said.HART, a communication protocol for device and sensor networks, needs a way to exchange data with control and I/O network protocols, which include Foundation Fieldbus and Profibus. That's typically done through a multiplexer, or gateway. But these gateways each have different interfaces that require custom programming. "Today, the way gateways bring Profibus or Fieldbus signals in is through a proprietary solution," said Fieldbus Foundation President and CEO Rich Timoney, in an interview with Managing Automation. "We want a common gateway allowing end users access to the communications backbone."The trio will develop a common set of compliance guidelines that will be incorporated into their respective product registration processes. There is no timeline for when the gateway specification will be delivered, as they will need to explore and develop a variety of use case requirements, Timoney said. The groups also need to work closely with ISA, which is developing its own wireless standard. Wireless HART is a subset of the soon-to-be-released ISA SP100 wireless standard. But some industry observers are wondering whether the ability to create a common wireless communication standard has already been undermined, given that there will be two specifications to adhere to.Honeywell, for example, a member of the HART Communication Foundation (HCF) board, voted against the release of the HART 7 spec that includes wireless. According to Jack Bolick, Honeywell Process Solutions president, there is no need for two wireless specifications when one of them — the ISA SP100 standard — will support multiple communication protocols, including HART. Wireless is a significant development in plant networks, and having two standards could splinter the industry and slow innovation. Bolick said. "Normally I'm a laid-back guy, but when it comes to my attention that something is not in the best interest of the industry nor our mutual customers, I start to question why we are headed down this route," Bolick told Managing Automation in an interview last month.This latest development concerning the Fieldbus Foundation, HCF, and Profibus does not impact the ISA SP100 efforts, except that when ISA 100 gets to the point of having a wireless HART gateway, it will incorporate whatever interfaces the group has developed. ISA, however, is more concerned about building a unified communication standard above and beyond what happens at the gateway. To that end, an ISA working group is meeting at the ISA Expo this week in Houston to figure out how Wireless HART can become a proper subset of ISA SP100, which should be an approved standard by November 2008."We are trying to find some common ground," said Dick Caro, CEO of CMC Associates and a member of the ISA SP100 standard body. But the fact remains, ISA SP100 and Wireless HART are different. "What we don't want to do is jam these together and make horse and rabbit stew — you know, something that has a strong flavor of one with a slight presence of the other. That doesn't make sense," he said.According to Fieldbus Foundation's Timoney, the group will work closely with ISA to help. "In the end, we want one standard in the [wireless] world, not competing standards," he said.
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