focused on industrial wireless, but now moving beyond process monitoring with 100 millisecond (ms) and slower response. Begun officially last November, it is known as the Factory Automation Working Group.

“WG 16 looks at factory automation that includes higher-speed, lower-latency control for both process and discrete manufacturing,” Whitehead explains. “Our primary objective is to define the problems, not necessarily to define the solutions. That way, once the challenges are codified and prioritized, the people most capable of technical innovation will have a solid touchstone for development.”

According to ISA, WG 16 is investigating: wireless sensing and/or actuating, possibly involving multiple hops; low latency in the range of 2-50 milliseconds; low power vs. line power trade-offs; security comparable to ISA100.11a; and leverage of existing technologies including hardware (chip sets) and software (communication protocols).

The first stage—submission of proposals and papers—closed at the end of April. With that, the process began all over again.

Every new standard brings new possibilities, according to Whitehead. “As far as wireless applications are concerned,” he says, “we’re only at the tip of the iceberg. As standards evolve, more engineers will be graduating with the necessary basic information, and more and more people will be able to move straight to implementation rather than puzzling over the problem space. When that happens, wireless applicability will take off, and five years from now, we’ll be benefiting from applications that nobody can even see today.”

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