Yokogawa claims wireless device first
16 Jun 2010
London – Yokogawa Electric Corp. has developed “the world’s first” field wireless devices based on the ISA100.11a industrial wireless communications standard, the company has announced. The products, it said, will be available on the market from July, with trial kits to be included in the offering.
Target application areas for the devices are oil & gas, LNG, refining, petrochemicals, chemicals, iron and steel, pulp and paper, power, non-metal/cement, food and beverages, water and wastewater treatment, said Yokogawa. Applications will include temperature, flow, and differential pressure/pressure measurement in plant processes.
The products include an EJX-B series differential pressure and pressure transmitter, a YTA series temperature transmitter, and an integrated field wireless gateway which connects field wireless devices with a host system. This can also provide field wireless network setting and management functions in field sensor networks.
“To help companies achieve ever higher levels of productivity, Yokogawa will continue to develop various kinds of field wireless devices for both monitoring and control applications, and is also proposing the development of new field digital networks that integrate wireless and wired technologies,” added a company statement.
According to Yokogawa, wireless networks have seen only limited use to date in industrial automation applications. This, it said, is due to their requirement for advanced technologies that ensure high reliability, real-time response, environmental resistance, and explosion-proof protection, and because of the absence until recently of an industrial communications standard for field wireless devices.
The ISA 100.11a standard addresses these issues by supporting high reliability, a wide range of applications, improved flexibility and network expandability and high compatibility with existing wired systems, Yokogawa believes.
Widespread acceptance of the standard, however, is still partly dependent on a coming review by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – through a subcommittee, the IECSC65C.
