industrial wireless book special edition - Networking ...

I n d u s t r i a l W i r e l e s s
Will ‘The Internet of Things’
change Industrial Wireless?
The development of an IP-based stack specification Using ZigBee IP created a great deal of interest within
the power and utility industries. But what does all this activity in networked wireless development mean for
the Process and Factory Automation sector? Long before governments around the world felt a need to pour
stimulus money into data infrastructure as an investment strategy in its own right, the Process and Factory
Automation businesses had been making quiet progress with dedicated wireless technology development. Is
this all about to change with the development of low cost, low power, mass market wireless stacks capable of
making direct connections to the Internet asks Frank Ogden
LET US STATE from the outset that WirelessHART
is a good, secure and robust method of
exchanging relatively low rate data around
physically distributed applications without
wires. It also runs the proven PHY and MAC
layers of IEEE802.15.4 which provide an
excellent platform for the higher layers of
wireless mesh networking and other features
essential to wireless in Process Automation.
So why are we getting so excited about the
appearance of new wireless stacks which fit
onto 802.15.4 and are not WirelessHART?
The answer is simple. Enter the words ‘smart
grid’ qualified by the word ‘stimulus’ into
Google and then amaze at the countless big
money initiatives which the search engine
throws up. Then look more closely at the names
involved… Cisco, PG&E, GE, Landis+Gyr, etc,
not to mention a second order of both the
eminently sensible organisations as well as
complete eco-barmies. This is serious stuff and
the money which surrounds it will prime the
development pumps in a way that wireless data
network programmes have not seen before. The
money now promised by governments right
around the world (not just in the USA) dwarfs
Process and Factory Automation developments
by orders of magnitude.
In practical terms, this money will (mostly)
mean the development of public utility meters
which can implement SCADA over wireless
enabling the exchange of billing information,
interactive adjustment of tariffs and control of
both consuming and microgeneration plant. Of
course this might be achieved by throwing some
of those development $billions at new wireless
protocols designed specifically for smart grid
and nothing else – a kind of WHART for electricity
meters. But it is not going to happen
like that for the same reason that the HCF
wireless device protocol is unlikely to achieve
long term dominance in the Process industry:
lack of Internet-compatible direct connectivity.
Gateways can be good
Actually, you can make two good arguments for
addressing HCF and proprietary wireless stacks
through network gateways rather than the IPbased
routers – the equivalent device in IPv6 –
for that is what we are really talking about.
Gateways offer security through natural segmentation,
always a good argument when talking
about Process Automation.
The second argument, perhaps cynical, is
even more compelling. If an application does
not conform to Internet standards, then it
becomes a marketing lock provided that you
are large enough to enforce it.
40
British fabless semiconductor company Jennic is just one of many companies around the world attempting to leverage 6LoWPAN. The company’s protocol stack provides a wireless
connectivity based on the IEEE802.15.4 standard at 2.4GHz allowing embedded devices to communicate wirelessly using Internet Protocol (IP). Designed to work with Jennic wireless
microcontroller, the IP connectivity solution provides a low power single chip implementation for the development of wireless networking products that offer multi-year battery life, which
can communicate with other IP devices in an existing network. Point-to-point and star connectivity are supported as standard in IEEE802.15.4, but the device can also connect over a
proprietary networking stack, providing a self-healing cluster tree with IPv6 direct addressing to individual nodes.
If it will work for smart meters, it could also work for remote sensors in a way presently beyond today’s wireless Process Automation systems
industrial ethernet book
sponsored by Advantech