ISA100 committee agrees industrial wireless standard

Research Triangle Park, North Carolina - The ISA100 Standards Committee on Wireless Systems for Automation has voted by a large majority to approve a major new industry standard, ISA100.11a, "Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications." ISA said it now expects to publish the standard in August.

The approval, by 81% of the voting members of the committee including 23 of the 24 end user members, followed two rounds of balloting and refinements to the document to reflect suggestions received from interested parties.

"We have passed a major milestone with the Committee vote approving the ISA100.11a draft standard," said ISA100 co-chair Pat Schweitzer of ExxonMobil. "Once the remaining steps in the process are complete, end users around the world will have an accredited ANSI/ISA wireless standard."

According to the ISA, comments received in the latest voting will be reviewed for applicability by Schweitzer and co-chair Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Other steps remaining in ISA's consensus-based standards development process include approval by the ISA Standards and Practices Board and ratification by the American National Standards Institute.

With over 600 members from around the world, ISA100 brings together wireless experts representing diverse industrial and technical interests in an open forum. The committee was established by ISA to address wireless manufacturing and control systems in areas including: The environment in which the wireless technology is deployed; Technology and life cycle for wireless equipment and systems; The application of wireless technology.

"I thank the leaders and members of the ISA100 working group that led the development of the standard, the editors who worked tirelessly to respond to reviewer comments throughout the process, and the entire committee membership for its contributions," stated Manges.

The ISA100.11a standard is intended to provide reliable and secure wireless operation for non-critical monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, open loop control, and closed loop control applications. The standard will define the protocol suite, system management, gateway, and security specifications for low-data-rate wireless connectivity with fixed, portable, and moving devices supporting very limited power consumption requirements.

The application focus is to address the performance needs of applications such  as monitoring and process control where latencies on the order of 100 ms can be tolerated, with optional behavior for shorter latency. To meet the needs of industrial wireless users and operators, the ISA100.11a standard will provide robustness in the presence of interference found in harsh industrial environments and with legacy non-ISA100 compliant wireless systems.

This standard addresses coexistence with other wireless devices anticipated in the industrial workspace, such as cell phones and devices based on IEEE 802.11x, IEEE 802.15x, IEEE 802.16x, and other relevant standards, as well as allowing for interoperability of ISA100 devices, it added.

This standard does not define or specify plant infrastructure or its security or performance characteristics, according to an ISA statement. However, it emphasised, it is important that the security of the plant infrastructure be assured by the end user.