Standards based wireless moves forward...

...aha! You thought I meant ISA100, didn't you?  Well, there are other standards-based wireless efforts underway that impact directly the field sensor space in the process industries. None of them are as far along as ISA100.11a, or WirelessHART, and none are backed by any major sensor or transmitter or controls manufacturers, like OneWireless. Nonetheless, some of these efforts are extremely interesting and novel. We've reported about ArchRock here before...it is a company dedicated to producing IP-based wireless sensor networks...and here's a new release from them that shows time does not stand still for any standards. From their press maven, Janis Ulevich: A year after introducing Primer Pack/IP, the first IP-based wireless sensor network, Arch Rock is taking standards-based WSNs beyond pilot network deployments to large-scale enterprise applications.The company's new "PhyNet" platform, being announced on March 31, implements a 3-tier architecture that eliminates the need to co-locate sensor networks with their server-based management and control functions. Whether the server resides in the next room, across a campus or across the globe, it can centrally control and manage any number of WSNs across WAN links.The key to this architecture is Arch Rock's new PhyNet Router, the first enterprise edge router for IP-based WSNs. The PhyNet Router is based on IETF 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over low-power radio), and creates an internetworking backbone between the WSN edge and the server. Strategic deployment of these routers lets PhyNet scale to support both large numbers of sensor nodes AND large numbers of distinct WSN meshes, while eliminating the performance bottlenecks and single points of failure that are characteristic of other architectures (e.g., ZigBee). You heard it here first!