Honeywell International Inc. yesterday unfurled a technology partnership with Crossbow Technology Inc. to integrate its sensor products with Crossbow's wireless network interfaces, gateways, and components.
Under the terms of the deal, Honeywell Sensing and Control (S&C), a division of the company's Automation and Control Solutions business, is packaging a three-node sensor network development kit and sensors with Crossbow's wireless mesh networking technology, including TinyOS -- a low-level event and task management open source operating environment. The turnkey offering, called XBW, enables industrial products OEMs to offer an end-to-end wireless mesh network that complies with the IEEE 802.15.4 radio standard as well as the Zigbee standard.
"Networking wireless sensors and integrating sensor data increases the ROI of sensor applications and enables new applications that were not previously economical," said Pat Murray, vice president of Honeywell Electronic Sensing, in a statement. "By working with Crossbow, we provide our customers with a Honeywell wireless sensor network solution they can trust."
Honeywell S&C caters to OEMs that offer a variety of industrial applications, including monitoring and control and building security.
Crossbow's mesh networking technology features self-healing capability, which means that it re-forms a connection automatically if an RF link is disrupted. This ensures the wireless network's reliability. The mesh technology is based on proprietary protocols, which is standard fare in the market.
"There is no broad networking standard available today," said Joerg Bertholdt, Crossbow's vice president of marketing, in an interview. "But standards bodies are working towards that."
For instance, Crossbow is involved in the ISA SP100 working group to support efforts to create an open industrial and multi-functional wireless standard. It's a group to which Honeywell Process Solutions also pledged its allegiance, earlier this month.
Honeywell has moved in multiple directions in its quest to fill out a wireless network strategy. Aside from this week's deal with Crossbow and an earlier decision to join the SP100 working group, Honeywell's Environmental and Combustion Controls business recently completed its acquisition of Tridium Inc., the maker of Niagara Framework, software for device-to-enterprise applications that integrates diverse systems and devices -- regardless of manufacturer or communication protocol -- into a unified platform. The acquisition expanded Honeywell's presence in the emerging machine-to-machine (M2M) communications segment.
"There is a bigger-picture strategy," said Anoop Mathur, senior technology manager at Honeywell's wireless lab. "We look across all of Automation and Control Systems to see what the wireless needs are. But no one wireless fits all," he said in an interview with Managing Automation. In that regard, more partnerships like the Crossbow deal are likely to happen.
Mathur said Honeywell chose Crossbow because it has successfully been tested in the marketplace. And for Crossbow, the Honeywell deal is a boon.
"It demonstrates that the wireless sensor network market has really grown up," Bertholdt said. "A major player like Honeywell felt compelled to add wireless technology quickly to their product portfolio. They looked around and chose our technology as the one that best fit their needs, which lends an incredible amount of credibility to our technology."
The partnership is not exclusive, but is a positive play all around, industry observers said. With this deal, Honeywell quickly wireless-enables its sensors and Crossbow expands its sales capability.
"Crossbow doesn't have sensors in the same way that Honeywell does," said Harry Forbes, an analyst at ARC Advisory Group (Needham, MA), in an interview. "And a lot of their market is in aerospace, so they don't have packaging and certifications and expertise in other vertical markets." But the real benefit to Crossbow -- a miniscule entity compared with its new $30 billion partner -- is Honeywell's sales and distribution channels, Forbes said.
In fact, the Honeywell XBW product line is available immediately through Honeywell's direct sales and distribution channel, the companies said.