Wireless industrial control and monitoring

Wireless industrial control and monitoring beyond cable replacement is the title of a paper to be given at the Profibus International Conference in June, from Sira Technology and connectBlue

The paper will be presented by Costis Koumpis and Lesley Hanna, Sira Technology, plus Mats Andersson and Magnus Johansson, connectBlue AB.

Although wireless networks are generally characterised by fast deployment and cost effectiveness, their applicability in industrial environments has not been flawless.

The vast majority of protocols for hardwired and conventional wireless networks emphasise speed over versatility and reliability, which is unsuitable for industrial control and monitoring applications.

In this latter context, the throughput requirements are much more relaxed but the operating conditions are harsher.

Hence, the requirements for reliability, adaptability, and scalability outweigh speed.

This paper describes the main aspects of networking of embedded devices such as actuators and sensors for industrial control and monitoring following a recent technology roadmapping activity conducted as part of the EU FP6 RUNES (Reconfigurable Ubiquitous Embedded Networked Embedded Systems - www.ist-runes.org) project.

A review of the state of the art in Profibus wireless cable replacement is then featured with emphasis on issues such as the non-common baudrates of RS485 interface and the multidrop networking, including a number of case studies.

The rest of the paper describes the RUNES approach where wireless nodes also function as routers and can relay data for their neighbours allowing distributed control and collection of local intelligence across factory plants.

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