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.
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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% |