|
Wireless Instrumentation
The first in the planned ISA100 family of industrial wireless networking
standards–ISA100.11a–had still not been adopted at the end of 2008.
But that has not deterred users from beginning implementation of wireless sensor
networks in process plants. Emerson Process Management unveiled several working
applications at its Global User Exchange in September. (See, for example, the news item
at www.automationworld.com/news-4686 .)
When our Wireless series editor, Dave Gehman, investigated wireless instrumentation
for this issue, he discovered that the application is similar to many engineering
challenges. There are a number of technologies that exist for engineers to choose from.
Careful investigation of alternatives in relation to the problem at hand is called for
when applying wireless technology, no less than when applying any other technology...
Read more
Catching the Big (Radio) Wave -
More and more, sensors and instruments report without wires.
Applications range from one radio, one sensor, to hundreds... even thousands... of
radios sending to centralized networks. Not surprisingly, the application
realities have a similar broad range, depending on where you are.
It's some time in the first decade of the 20th century. Speaking conceptually and
totally speculatively, somewhere, at some factory, the first wireless set-up was being
concocted by an enthusiast for that brand–new technology–radio. An operator located in
production boonies with a transmitter the size of a refrigerator and a Morse code key
feeds an operator listening to a receiver in the factory manager's office.
A century later, everything (outside of modulation of electromagnetic waves) has
changed. The radio now would fit in a pack of gum. The antenna is half a hand-span long or
less, not two stories high. Data rates are bytes per millisecond, not 20 seconds per
word.
Though it seems to go unrecorded, some time in modern memory, wireless technology
was employed in a point (or, more accurately, point-to-point) solution for a sensor.
Before long, point–to–point radios covered both simple sensors (1/0, on/off) as well as
more complex sensors and instruments, the latter transmitting ranges or multiple data
layers...
Read more
Wireless Comes to Packaging -
Used for a decade in places such as warehousing and petrochemicals,
where long distances make wired connections inefficient, wireless is now
surfacing in packaging.
Packaging World editors have begun to hear tell of packaging operations
where wireless connectivity is being deployed. These three examples are worth a
look.
The first, in pet food packaging, is at Nestlé Purina. That's where Sentekin Can is
part of a team that is about two years into a project that has added wireless Local Area
Networking (WLAN) to existing wired Ethernet LAN in 22 plants across the country.
“Decisions on what wireless technology vendor to use were made jointly by the
electrical engineering group and the information systems group,” says Can, principal
controls engineer at Nestlé Purina and a member of the electrical engineering (EE) team...
Read more
Previous Wireless World Review Editions:
October 2008
July 2008
|
