Process control wireless standard gains approval

19 May 2009

The ISA100 standards committee on automation wireless systems has finally approved the 100.11a, Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications. This latest draft of the long awaited standard was approved by 81% of the voting committee and 23 out of the 24 end user member companies.

Process control wireless standard gains approval

“Once the remaining steps in the process are complete, end users around the world will have an accredited ANSI/ISA wireless standard which has been developed in an open forum that is the hallmark of ISA standard development,” commented ISA100 co-chair Pat Schweitzer of ExxonMobil.

Schweitzer and co-chair Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Laboratory will review comments from the latest voting. The next step in the process is approval by the ISA Standards and Practices Board and ratification by the American National Standards Institute. Co-chairs expect ISA publication in August.

The ISA-100.11a standard is intended to provide reliable and secure wireless operation for non-critical monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, open loop control, and closed loop control applications. The applications will focus on the performance needs such as monitoring and process control where latencies on the order of 100 ms can be tolerated, with optional behaviour for shorter latency. The standard will also provide robustness in the presence of interference found in harsh industrial environments and with legacy non-ISA100 compliant wireless systems.

With over 600 members from around the world, ISA100 addresses wireless manufacturing and control systems. The committee’s focus is to improve the confidence in, integrity of, 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.