wireless-survey-lead-image
wireless-survey-lead-image
wireless-survey-lead-image
wireless-survey-lead-image
wireless-survey-lead-image

State of Wireless Networking

Aug. 6, 2013
The Results from a 2013 Survey of 150 Industrial Networking Readers Provide Insight into Wireless Options
About the Author
Jim Montague is the Executive Editor at Control, Control Design and Industrial Networking magazines. Jim has spent the last 13 years as an editor and brings a wealth of automation and controls knowledge to the position. For the past eight years, Jim worked at Reed Business Information as News Editor for Control Engineering magazine. Jim has a BA in English from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and lives in Skokie, Illinois.

Check Out Montague's Google+ profile.

A survey of more than 150 readers of sister-publication Industrial Networking in February 2013 found that:

Nearly 57% of respondents presently have wireless in their applications and facilities, while 43.2% do not use wireless. Of the 57% with wireless Ethernet, the most common types employed are:

Wireless HART 31.6%
802.11b/g 28.6%
WiFi (802.11n) 9.2%
Proprietary protocol 9.2%
802.11a 5.1%
ZigBee (802.15.4) 1%

Meanwhile, 47.5% of respondents have approved projects to deploy wireless during the next year, but 52.5% have not. Of the 47.5% of respondents who plan to deploy wireless, the most popular types are:

Wireless HART 35.8%
802.11b/g 16.1%
WiFI (802.11n) 14.8%
ZigBee (802.15.4) 4.9%
Proprietary protocol 6.2%
802.11a 2.5%


In addition, respondents' most common uses or intended uses for wireless are:

Monitoring 59.7%
Control 27.7%
Alerts/alarms 12.6%


Also, respondents needed varying cycle times from their wireless devices, including:

1 second or slower 52.8%
500-999 msec  20.8%
100-499 msec 15.2%
Faster than 100 msec 11.2%
About the Author

Jim Montague | Executive Editor

Jim Montague is executive editor of Control.