Key highlights
- The article emphasizes how wireless integration can lower infrastructure costs and simplify system expansion.
- It describes how wireless-enabled devices can transmit diagnostic data and fault alerts, enabling predictive maintenance and reducing unplanned downtime.
Following all the gains wireless networking has made in recent years, its primary task now is continuing to make integration and deployment easier.
“In our private lives, use and trust of digital technology has evolved rapidly. Today, we can open our garage doors and activate cameras for delivery drivers, transfer money with digital cash apps, and let our cars correct our steering,” says Jason Pennington, digital solutions director at Endress+Hauser. “For speed and safety-critical applications in the process industries, we still see a wired-first philosophy. For the other 40-70% of devices used for monitoring or non-critical applications, it's not crazy to believe that these sensors will be shifting towards wireless technologies in the next 10 years.”
Pennington reports that a large chemical manufacturer in the western U.S. operates about 500 devices in its onsite processes, including more than 350 with wireless capabilities. These include 150 items that are wired to its safety system, but transmit valuable diagnostic and fault information to a parallel information hub for logging, while delivering potential remedies and cause information to maintenance staff.
“To allow for expansion, minimize infrastructure costs, and improve trust, some of these wireless components work with the safety system, and use HART or native diagnostics,” explained Pennington. “Plus, as pharmaceutical processes migrate to single-use equipment for active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), and away from dedicated equipment, wireless is assisting PLCs, smart I/O with HART that link to WirelessHART, and other devices typically deployed in single-use processes on small skids. Using a WirelessHART gateway enables condition monitoring or asset maintenance platforms like Endress+Hauser’s Netilion. Wireless is really evolving into an ecosystem of devices, processes and people.”
Find the right type
To get any wireless project started, Pennington adds that some things remain the same, including performing a thorough site survey and assessment.
“Users must accept that there isn’t just one type of wireless, and that there are many different protocols and standards,” says Pennington. “Consequently, users must know distances, speed, data, throughput, fidelity and acquisition speed of their particular networks. Next, they can combine this information with the challenges they’re trying to solve, along with their business cases and goals, and use this input to guide them to the right solutions.”
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Fortunately, the costs of wireless surveys and assessments have declined precipitously recent years, making it easier to approach these projects. “Where it could previously cost $50,000 for a radio frequency (RF) survey, the entry point for site surveys and wireless projects is very low,” explains Pennington. “For example, we can put a wireless assessment instrument onto a golf cart, drive it around a plant for three days, and it will tell us everything we need to know, such as where wireless access points are needed, where signals are weak, and whether single- or omni-directional antennas would be useful.”
Pennington reports there are also websites with downloadable wireless network design software and mapping programs, which can tell users what wireless topologies, designs and components they require. Provided by mobile carriers, these websites typically begin by using mapping software to provide topographical renderings, and overlay these physical maps with their coverage maps to generate point-to-point requirements, which determines the recommended wireless architecture for a specified location.
“For instance, one of Endress+Hauser’s customers mining agricultural chemicals added a wireless scanner to their iPhones that could show signal strengths in different areas,” adds Pennington. “It indicated where wireless coverage was good or not, and they completely mapped their facility just with people walking around.”
