Wireless: Yokogawa weighs in

The race to establish wireless sensor technologies in the process industries has moved up a gear with an announcement by Yokogawa Electric Corp that it has developed “the world’s first” field wireless devices based on the ISA100.11a industrial wireless communications standard.

In launching the devices now, Yokogawa has gained a six-month headstart on its nearest rivals, company officials claimed at a press meeting at its European headquarters in Amersfoort - held during its 5th European User Conference, 23-24 June, nearby in Amsterdam.

The Japanese group’s initial ISA100.11a offerings will include an EJX-B series differential pressure and pressure transmitter, a YTA series temperature transmitter, and an integrated field wireless gateway that connects field wireless devices with a host system.

The products were to be available on the market from July, with trial kits to be included in the offering. Target markets included oil & gas, LNG, refining, petrochemicals, chemicals, steel, pulp & paper, power, food & beverage, and water/wastewater treatment.

Yokogawa aims to develop more wireless devices for both monitoring and control applications, as well as field digital networks that integrate wireless and wired technologies. It also intends to major on support customers in adopting the technology, including wireless coverage surveys, network design, security, commissioning and training.

Long-time champion of the ISA100 standard, Honeywell Process Solutions said it “will be shipping products that are ISA100.11a ready and upgradable to the approved global standard in the last quarter of 2010.”

Rival standard

Other major control & automation vendors, including Emerson, ABB and Siemens, are offering devices based on a rival WirelessHART standard, which are already being used in various applications in the process industries worldwide.

At the Amsterdam conference, Joost van Loon, director, industrial automation at Yokogawa Europe BV, however, declared: “We see from our customer base that users are not really choosing WirelessHART.”

Likewise, Yokogawa sees no need to introduce backward compatibility to its devices to take into account what is already installed in WirelessHART. This again, said van Loon, was “because, and I quote from end-users, there is no significant installed base yet.”

Yokogawa is backing ISA100.11a because it is driven by user requirements, officials listing BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and Proctor & Gamble among end-users “demonstrating their commitment” to the standard.

The technology, van Loon added, offered benefits in terms of interoperability and from being based on proven standards that address the “full wireless solution” - including areas such as sensors, video, personnel tracking, voice-over-IP and RFID tagging.

Single standard

“End-users want a single standard. They don’t want to make a choice on what is the better technology,” the IA director continued.

WirelessHART is much more of a vendor-driven standard, while ISA100.11a is driven by users and, in addition, has the technological set-up and organisation of ISA.

“It is not one standard, but a family of standards that has been designed not just for monitoring but also control applications. So we believe it has a much larger scope and potential for a variety of applications and solutions.”

Industry acceptance of ISA100.11a is still partly dependent on it gaining acceptance as an international standard. WirelessHART was approved by the IEC, as IEC 62591Ed. 1.0, earlier this year, making it the first global standard for wireless sensor networks.

After recent rejections, the ISA wireless standard is due to be re-submitted to ANSI (the American National Standards Institute) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in the next few months.

Meanwhile, end-users, including the influential German-based automation users group NAMUR, have expressed dismay at the continuing wireless standard battles. As Bart Schaminee, global strategic procurement manager (PA/EI) at SABIC, commented “they are stupid fighting among themselves,” adding that the dispute is adding unnecessary costs to the technology.

Convergence

Back at Amersfoort HQ, Yokogawa executives pointed to progress with on-going work at an ISA sub-committee, ISA100.12, to make the competing wireless standards compatible - despite some earlier scepticism, even within the top ranks of the sub-committee itself.

“The ISA100.12 group will issue a [report] very soon based on the user requirements, including the NAMUR ND133 document,” Penny Chen of Yokogawa’s global marketing team said at the press conference. This, she indicated, will involve requests for proposals towards developing specifications for convergence of the two technologies.

There are a number of differences between ISA100.11a and WirelessHART for the convergence group to go over, explained Neil Hankey, global marketing manager for field instrumentation at Yokogawa. However, he added, the main issue affecting the integration of both is in addressing the devices.

“WirelessHART uses a proprietary hierarchical address system whereas ISA100 sticks with the IP v6 internet standard for addressing. Both of these issues can be addressed at the system level; it is not a game killer,” said the marketing manager.

Meanwhile, Yokogawa is looking at developing an ISA110.11a adaptor that would enable any HART-capable device in the field to transmit signals wirelessly. The company will initially work with a partner to supply these adaptors to the market, officials said.

“The beauty of those devices is that they can be used with other solutions that may not fit with wireless, such as flow meters that require much more power than is available today by batteries,” said Hankey.

“If power is available to power such devices then it is just a case of bringing a signal back to the control room,” the field instrumentation manager continued. “We see a big future for these adaptors, certainly for supporting the adoption of wireless instrumentation until full blown products are available.”

Meanwhile, Yokogawa has also developed a battery pack for wireless devices that uses commercially available off-the-shelf batteries that can be removed and replaced in the field, including in hazardous areas.

The company is proposing that the concept be adopted as an industry standard. Other suppliers are ’studying this proposal,’ Yokogawa officials said.

Wi-Fi or not Wi-Fi

Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) has beefed up its OneWireless offering with a version, labelled OneWireless R200. This, it said, will allow process plants to design a wireless network with coverage either for field instruments only, or for both field instruments and Wi-Fi devices.

The development to the Honeywell ISA100.11a-based portfolio is said to simplify the installation/expansion of wireless networks, and to increase transmitter battery life. This, said Honeywell, can cut the cost of installing and maintaining wireless field instrument networks by up to 50%.

“Many process manufacturers are looking for smaller, tactical wireless networks for specific field instruments, but they also want something that will expand to support more comprehensive, plant-wide wireless solutions,” said HPS president Norm Gilsdorf.

“The latest version of OneWireless gives plants freedom to design a network that meets their site requirements, both now and in the future. It decreases set-up time, as well as the lifecycle costs of their wireless solutions.”

R200 allows plants to create field instrument networks using new field device access point (FDAP) and wireless device manager (WDM) features. The FDAP supports ISA100.11a devices by assuming message-routing duties, enabling users to connect wireless field instruments to the process control network and route data from the field.

Plants can also use field instrument routing options to create a network of battery-powered field instruments, and route messages from neighbouring field instruments - including ISA100.11a devices from other vendors - to process control applications.

WDM is a gateway system and security manager that ensures secure communication between the field instruments and plant network. Its web-based interface allows engineers with basic IT knowledge to quickly set up their ISA100.11a networks, and speeds up commissioning, monitoring and troubleshooting.