When Wayne Manges talks about industrial wireless networking, he sometimes paraphrases Charles Dickens. In the wireless business today, “it’s the best of times, and it’s the worst of times,” says Manges, who serves as co-chair of the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society’s (ISA) SP100 committee, formed early this year to develop an industrial wireless networking standard.

“It’s the best of times, because you’re seeing more and more checkbooks open,” says Manges. He notes that electric power plants, in particular—both nuclear and fossil fuel—are currently among the most enthusiastic adopters of wireless technology. “These guys are buying wireless today, and they’re getting ROIs (returns on investment) of six months,” Manges contends. The Comanche Peak nuclear power plant, near Glen Rose, Texas, is “the largest industrial wireless sensor installation in the world right now,” according to Manges, who is program manager for industrial wireless programs at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The flip side of the story, however, is that industrial users in many segments are still holding back from making extensive, in-plant wireless investments. Concerns over reliability, security and the lack of an industrial wireless standard are the most often cited causes. “The bad news is, we’re still seeing failures. There are still horror stories out there where somebody’s microwave oven comes on at lunch time and wipes out the entire [wireless] network. So part of our purpose in developing standards is to overcome some of these obstacles,” Manges observes.

Industrial end users looking to implement wireless networks in their plants today face a dizzying assortment of technology choices, ranging from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ family of IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards, to short-range Bluetooth systems and self-organizing mesh networks based on the ZigBee specification or other IEEE 802.15.4-based approaches. That’s not to mention a collection of proprietary vendor solutions for use on 400 Megahertz (MHz), 900 MHz and 2.4 Gigahertz (GHz) bandwidths.

The SP100 committee is tasked with making sense of it all, based on end-user requirements, and is developing standards, recommended practices, technical reports and related information that will define procedures for implementing wireless systems. The committee expects to release initial documents for industry reaction and use in early 2006, and “we’ll probably have a draft standard in the fall,” says Manges.

Why wireless?

The potential benefits of wireless technology in the factory are compelling. The most obvious advantage is the often dramatic savings that comes with the elimination of wiring installation costs. These can run anywhere from $10 to $40 per foot up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per foot, say industry sources, depending on the type of installation. Other benefits accrue through the improved mobility achieved both for mobile equipment and for workers, who no longer have to be tethered to communicate or exchange data.

Less obvious are the new kinds of applications that wireless technology can enable. “It’s not trying to take a wired piece of equipment and make it wireless, it’s trying to figure out what you can do that you couldn’t do before, now that you have wireless,” notes Richard A. Sanders, an engineer at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, in Fairfax, Va. “When you look at it that way, you can find a lot of advantages to wireless and a lot of applications that maybe you never thought of before,” says Sanders, who co-chairs the SP100 committee with Manges.

Gabe Sierra agrees. “One of the key things with wireless is that it requires a new kind of thinking, because you’ve literally changed the game on what you can do and what’s possible,” says Sierra, who is wireless marketing manager for Emerson Process Management, an Austin, Texas-based process automation supplier. Sierra cites wireless temperature monitoring on a steam line as one example of an application not typically done using wired technology. “Because you can cost-effectively install wireless points, you can monitor the steam pipeline over the course of a distance to find pockets of condensation, allowing you to take appropriate corrective action,” he notes.

Emerson currently offers wireless products designed for remote monitoring and long-haul communications, and is working with multiple customers on field trials of various wireless technologies, including so-called “mesh” or “self-organizing” networks for in-plant applications, Sierra says. The company is participating in SP100 activities, and is also working closely with the Hart Wireless Working Group, which is developing a wireless standard that will feature self-organizing networks as a major foundation, according to Sierra. Emerson is probably about 12 months away from ...