The ISA Wireless Compliance Institute and three suppliers have demonstrated a prototype ISA 100.11a application at the 2008 Industrial Wireless Conference in Chongqing, China.
ISA 100.11a is designed to address low-power wireless field devices, such as wireless field transmitters. As drafted, ISA 100.11a will use RFC 4944 for these sensor networks.
Three suppliers collaborated to produce the prototype demo in Chongqing: General Electric, Honeywell, and Nivis (an Atlanta-based systems integrator familiar with sensor networks).
ARC Advisory Group’s Harry Forbes reports that IP supporters claim they are now close to WirelessHART in terms of energy consumption, and getting closer.
“Proprietary products have been around a few years now. WirelessHART products are reaching the market now, while the ISA 100 and RFC 4944 products remain in earlier stages. Regardless, ARC believes that the measure to watch is how these products match up in terms of their unattended life and reliability. This will greatly on how well each sensor technology preserves its battery,” he says.