wilamowski-b-m-irwin-j-d-industrial-communication-systems-2011

WirelessHART, ISA100.11a, and OCARI 53-15
WirelessHART obliges to use a maintenance port for the key exchange while ISA100.11a supports asymmetric
keys, i.e., credentials of new devices may be verified using public keys shared openly and a corresponding
asymmetric secret private key kept inside the new device itself.
53.6 Example of Platform Providers
Even if all the solutions discussed in this chapter are recently proposed, the market already offers some
development platforms and conformance testing tools. In fact, the main advantage deriving from the
adoption of standards is probably manufacturers’ interoperability.
For this reason, HART consortium has worked hard on the development of test specifications;
it has recently released a “sniffer” to be used to verify messages over the air and has announced
the so-called Wi-Htest [HSZ09], a linux box that automates the execution of single device testing,
recreating the packet exchange of a whole virtual network around the device under test, including
corrupted packets.
Besides, ISA organization has created an industry group within the Automation Standards
Compliance Institute called the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute, in order to facilitate the proper
use and application of automation standards through the development and implementation of conformance
assessment programs and related activities. During the last ISA expo (November 2008),
devices from 14 different instrumentation vendors successfully formed a wireless network based on the
ISA100.11a draft technology.
As an example of platform providers, consider Nivis, a company launched in 1998, which is specialized in
sensor networks, supporting an array of standard sensing and control protocols including WirelessHART
and ISA100.11a, and most recently 6LoWPAN. The company supplies wireless sensors, edge routers,
a management appliance and application, and a gateway to plant or other enterprise networks.
Most of difficulties in realizing an error-free wireless network are, obviously, in the development
of protocol stack; to speed up the process, it has been founded the Wireless Industrial Technology
Konsortium—WiTECK—http://witeck.org/. It is an open, nonprofit membership organization whose
mission is to provide a reliable, cost-effective, high-quality portfolio of core enabling system software
for industrial wireless sensing applications, under a company- and platform-neutral umbrella. They are
now working on the realization of a WirelessHART stack.
Emerson Process Management has already announced some devices compliant with WirelessHART,
as a core part of its Smart Wireless plant automation solutions portfolio. Other manufacturers that are
working on wireless devices (or wireless adapters for legacy devices) are Honeywell (with their onewireless
solution), Yokogawa, Elpro (now part of MTL), Pepperl + Fuchs (with WirelessHART nodes),
and ABB, just to mention few of them (Table 53.1).
TABLE 53.1
Example of Platform Provider
Environment
Technology
Hardware Stack (SW) Debug Tools
WirelessHART
ISA100.11a
Emerson
Honeywell
Yokogawa
NIVIS
MTL
P + F
ABB
NIVIS
ABB
WiTECK
NIVIS
NIVIS
NIVIS
HCF consortium
NIVIS
OCARI Telit communication Telit communication Telit communication
© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC