ISA100 votes to approve wireless standard

The ISA100 Standards Committee on Wireless Systems for Automation has voted to approve industry standard ISA100.11a.

The standard is entitled 'Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications.

The approval, by 81 per cent of voting members of the committee, including 23 of the 24 end user members, follows two rounds of balloting and refinements to the document to reflect the suggestions received from many interested parties.

Comments received in the latest voting will be reviewed for applicability by ISA100 co-chairs Pat Schweitzer of ExxonMobil and Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Other steps remaining in ISA's consensus-based standards development process include approval by the ISA Standards and Practices Board and ratification by the American National Standards Institute, of which ISA is an accredited member.

The co-chairs are hopeful the standard will be published by ISA in August.

With over 600 members from around the world, ISA100 brings together wireless experts representing diverse industrial and technical interests in an open forum.

The committee was established by ISA to address wireless manufacturing and control systems in areas including: the environment in which wireless technology is deployed; technology and life cycle for wireless equipment and systems; the application of wireless technology.

The committee's focus is to improve the confidence in, and integrity and availability of, components and systems used for manufacturing or control, and to provide criteria for procuring and implementing wireless technology in the control system environment.

The ISA100.11a standard is intended to provide reliable and secure wireless operation for non-critical monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, and open-loop and closed-loop control applications.

The standard will define the protocol suite, system management, gateway and security specifications for low-data-rate wireless connectivity with fixed, portable and moving devices supporting very limited power consumption requirements.

The application focus is to address the performance needs of applications such as monitoring and process control, where latencies in the order of 100ms can be tolerated, with optional behaviour for shorter latency.

To meet the needs of industrial wireless users and operators, the ISA100.11a standard will provide robustness in the presence of interference found in harsh industrial environments and with legacy non-ISA100-compliant wireless systems.

This standard addresses coexistence with other wireless devices anticipated in the industrial workspace, such as cell phones and devices based on IEEE 802.11x, IEEE 802.15x, IEEE 802.16x and other relevant standards.

It also allows interoperability of ISA100 devices.

It does not define or specify plant infrastructure or its security or performance characteristics.

However, it is important that the security of the plant infrastructure is assured by the end user.

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