Wireless Spreads in Asia

The district of Xigu is located in Gansu province in north west China, and is about a two hour drive through rocky scenery from the provincial capital of Lanzhou, which in ancient times was known as the Golden City (Jincheng) and for travelers a vital stop along the Silk Road. As well as a brand new airport in the capital, China's modernization and industrialization efforts are evident in the surroundings, with the once poor province now an important base for oil refining and petrochemicals, as well as a number of other industries.

Xigu itself is home to a major tank farm facility run by national oil company PetroChina. Here, oil products from nearby refineries are stored and then organized for transportation to other provinces south and west of Gansu.

A major retrofit in 2010 saw the implementation of a new control system, Experion PKS from Honeywell Process Solutions, for handling product order, stock and movement management, as well as security functions like CCTV monitoring and access control. Aside from controls upgrading, PetroChina was also interested to see if Honeywell's industrial wireless solution, OneWireless, could potentially be used to realize further efficiencies in the facility.

Seeing is believing
The company was evidently convinced because today, a walk around in the shadows of the huge storage tanks reveals wireless pressure transmitters, valve position sensors, operators carrying wireless handhelds, and rooftop nodes with antennae pointing skywards. Indeed, led by Honeywell Process Solutions staff including product marketing manager Soroush Amidi, business development manager Rohit Wariyar, wireless product manager John Jiang, and senior project manager Weiqiang Hou, the half-day spent at Xigu along with other trade media from around Asia provided a rare glimpse into an actual wireless installation.

For while much has been read and said and written about industrial wireless since 2007, opportunities to actually see a working system in action have been notably absent. So it was not surprising to see cameras clicking away, notes being taken, and PetroChina plant managers and the Honeywell representatives earnestly quizzed on the reasons for going wireless and the technical details of the system that was eventually implemented.

In all, three wireless applications – real-time position information (open/closed) of the root tank manual valves; pressure measurement for remotely-located oil pipelines; and real-time status updating of status of filling of the transportation rail cars that leave the facility – in the tank farm have been realized by an infrastructure that is centered around the use of Honeywell's multinodes for communicating with the 22 wireless pressure transmitters, six valve position sensors, and four (hazardous area) tablet computers.

First foray
As per the company's OneWireless philosophy, the fieldlevel instruments and the wireless handhelds exist on the same network infrastructure, with the multinodes able to communicate with both the ISA100.11a transmitters as well as the wireless Ethernet enabled handhelds.

In the Xigu installation, those transmitters are configured as “non-routing” in that they communicate their data directly one of the multinodes, rather than forming a mesh between themselves in a so-called “routing” configuration. One of the five multinodes (which do form a mesh) also acts as a gateway to transmit the measured and operator-input data back to the Experion PKS system in the central control room.The transmiiters are configured to send data every five seconds, which is sufficiently fast for the monitoring applications they are used for and which enables battery life to be conserved.

Evidently satisfied PetroChina managers at the facility cited a number of benefits of taking their first leap into wireless. These include access to valuable, real-time information without the need to implement costly and awkward wired infrastructure; increasing the productivity of employees previously engaged in cumbersome paper recording at the railway loading dock; and the ability to add more applications via an easy extension of the wireless system already in place.

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‘Wireless is about much more than just field instruments'

Soroush Amidi, who leads Honeywell Process Solutions' ISA100.11a-centric industrial wireless initiative, tells CE Asia all about the company's OneWireless approach.

Q: Could you clarify your role at Honeywell Process Solutions?
A: I am based in Montreal, Canada, and responsible globally for the OneWireless network and associated product portfolio. OneWireless refers to Honeywell's industrial wireless technology solution, which has been designed from the ground up to enable multiple wireless applications within the plant – including process sensing, remote mobile access, and security and safety.

Q: Can you describe some of the technology behind OneWireless?
A: Crucially, our approach towards wireless is based around the premise that the process plant of the future will be an interconnected plant and that this connection will involve more than just the field instruments. So that is why our “one” network supports Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 wireless Ethernet) devices as well as field devices conforming to the new ISA100.11a standard. Our view is that wireless is about much more than just field instruments.

A key enabling component within the OneWireless infrastructure is the “multinode”. This includes two IEEE 802.11a/b/g radios and one IEEE 802.15.4 radio for ISA100.11a field instruments. One IEEE 802.11 a/b/g radio is used as Wi-Fi access point for Wi-Fi devices such as mobile operator handhelds and video security cameras, and the other is used as a bridge with neighboring multinodes forming a mesh network. Meanwhile, the IEEE 802.15.4 radio for ISA100.11a handles data from ISA100.11a compliant wireless instruments out the field.

So a user that implements OneWireless can take an advantage of a single wireless infrastructure, which means lower initial capital cost and lower ongoing maintenance cost. In addition, the topology can be flexible in that while a solution based around the multinode provides fast update rates, the field instruments can be configured as “routing” for less critical applications. Here, they form a mesh with neighboring instruments and the data hops along the mesh and on to a host gateway, rather than each device communicating with a multinode in a “non-routing” arrangement.

Q: So OneWireless is based around ISA100.11a?
A: Yes, that's correct. I know that there has been a lot of debate about industrial wireless standards in the last couple of years, but Honeywell is firmly of the belief that ISA100.11a is a better standard, is more comprehensive than WirelessHart, and importantly, has been user-driven in terms of its development such that the requirements of the end-user community are reflected in the details of the standard.

One of these requirements is to be able to do control as well as monitoring, and this is possible through the fast-update multinode topology. Another key feature of ISA100.11a is its ability – through a generic “tunnel” – to carry existing protocols such as Hart, Profibus, etc, to enable existing installations to be easily converted to wireless.

For instance, a lot of vibration transmitters come with their own proprietary protocol, which would ordinarily make it very difficult to add to an open standards based wireless network. But with ISA100.11a tunneling, that protocol can be “wrapped” and the vibration data sent wirelessly just like a normal ISA100.11a compliant transmitter. As for the standards debate, we both ISA and WirelessHart will ultimately converge but still, the reality is that ISA has got everything that WirelessHart has but with the addition of a few pluses. And we like those pluses.

Q: But I see that unlike WirelessHart, ISA100.11a is not an international (IEC) standard yet?
A: The approach the ISA100 committee took was not to rush through getting the IEC certification, because once it is approved as an IEC standard, making changes to it is very difficult. What Honeywell and the other vendors supporting the ISA industrial wireless initiative did was to take the ISA100-2009 standard that was approved (by ISA in 2009) and develop products based on that. After further work on the standard, ISA100-2011 was ratified earlier this year and this is the version that is being sent for IEC certification. And we expect to see the IEC standard equivalent of ISA100-2011 by around the middle of next year.

Honeywell already offers a wide portfolio of devices that conform to the ISA standard: pressure, temperature, level, corrosion, valve position – are some of the primary instruments. We also committed to early users that they would be able to upgrade from the initial 2009 version to the final version easily via firmware, and that there would be no need to rip and replace already installed instruments.

Q: How much of a concern to customers is the so-called standards war?
A: While customers do want to know the difference between ISA100.11a and WirelessHart, I find that whole standards thing seems to be more of a concern for the media, which seems to have been covering the issue quite extensively. But when you talk to customers you find that what they are looking for is something that is reliable, is secure, and solves their problem in the most cost-effective way. For Honeywell, our proposition is really around that one system that can do multiple applications.

Q: For what types of applications is wireless being implemented?
A: Honeywell OneWireless installations pretty much cover all the industries that we serve. And these installations range from small networks of just field instruments right up to site-wide implementations involving a multitude of both Wi-Fi and sensing devices.

We often find that the first installation is driven by the need of a single department looking to solve an immediate problem in the plant. After that initial success it then grows out across the facility to cover more and more applications.

Maintenance is proving to be a popular application for wireless. For instance, compared to the traditional method of operators going round making manual measurements on paper and later updating a database, using a handheld connected on the wireless network enables immediate reporting of equipment condition and allows asset uptime to be increased and money to be saved. For rotating equipment, conventional diagnostics usually involves someone going out and doing periodic vibration analysis.

But like a health check-up, a condition may persist for a long time and do extensive damage before it is detected. With wireless vibration transmitters, however, you can monitor in real time and so get a much higher level of predictive maintenance. Typically, we see payback periods of less than a year for rotating equipment applications.

An interesting application is that of personal safety in hazardous environments. Under the BW brand, Honeywell has been a leader in portable gas detectors for many years and a wireless (Wi-Fi) version is now available. Before, only the wearer would have been aware of the detector alarm going off in the event of a gas leak. But with the wireless device, an alert can be sent in real-time back to the control room.

In addition, when a gas leak incident occurs, it's critical to know where all the personnel are, and because the wireless system enables their locations to be tracked, the emergency response teams can be rapidly deployed to where they are needed.

Q: After about four years in the market now, how would you assess the state of industrial wireless technology?
A: When we launched OneWireless in 2007 there was a lot of scepticism about installing a wireless network in the process plant, even for relatively simple monitoring applications. Now we have customers using it for closed-loop control. That's how far we have come; it's unbelievable! We're also seeing more greenfield-site adoption of wireless, i.e. installation straight away into new plants, and a high acceptance of the technology here in Asia.

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The Real Story on ISA100.11a

With some debate on the international standardization progress of ISA100.11a, Andre Ristano of the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute tells CE Asia where it's really at.

Q: What is the role of the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute?
A: WCI, as it is commonly known, functions as an operational group within the Automation Standards Compliance Institute (ASCI), which was set up by ISA (International Society for Automation) in 2006 to provide certification, conformance and compliance assessment services for products developed in accordance with standards developed by ISA. We use third-party, independent test labs to actually carry out the testing and provide a necessary level of credibility. The ISA Security Compliance Institute (ISCI) is another consortium within ASCI. The ISASecure designation identifies and promotes security standards, compliant products and systems.

Right now, we are very involved in promoting the new ISA100.11a (“Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications”) standard through a series of global seminars. This is in accordance with our mission to raise awareness of the ISA100 within the user and vendor communities. And of course, we are very active in certifying products against this standard.

Q: Where is ISA100.11a in terms of international (IEC) standardization?
A: There has been a certain amount of confusion about this, although I would say a lot of that has been deliberately generated by people who don't like the standard! Although standards development is not the responsibility of WCI, I can tell you the current status.

ISA100.11a was first approved by the ISA standards committee back in September 2009. Suppliers went ahead to build process instruments and network equipment based on the technical specifications contained in that release. And we at WCI commenced our certification testing of products based on that 2009 standard.

In the second half of 2010, based on supplier and WCI feedback, certain revisions were made to the standard. It was then re-voted on and ISA100.11a-2011 was passed by ISA as the final approved standard earlier this year. It was then submitted to IEC with a view to getting approval as a full international standard. (Editor's note: Since this interview, ISA100.11a has received publicly available specification (PAS) status from IEC.)

Q: But I understand that ISA100.11a was previously rejected by ANSI (American National Standards Institute)?
A: What actually happened was that one person objected but provided no reason for doing so. A lot of people misunderstand the different roles played by ISA and ANSI: it is the job of ISA to develop a standard; and it is the job of ANSI to review the process that was followed in the development of that standard. In the case of ISA100.11, ANSI had no argument with its technical content.

Q: So ISA's work on ISA100.11a is complete?
A: Yes, that is correct. ISA100.11a is an approved ISA standard, it is real, and it has been submitted to IEC. Honeywell, Yokogawa, Flowserve, and GE are just some of the suppliers building products conforming to the standard. And WCI is there to raise awareness to get more vendors on board, and to ensure that the products developed fully meet the standard and, of course, are interoperable.

Q: What about convergence with WirelessHart?
A: As I mentioned, it is not the role of WCI to develop the standard. So I would rather stay out of that debate and concentrate on building a top drawer, globally recognized ISA100.11a certification program.

Q: So how do you see the end game for ISA100.11a?
A: Right now, you keep hearing about ISA100.11a v WirelessHart, but that will soon cease to be the conversation. That's because ISA100.11a with its ability to run other protocols, like Profibus, Foundation fieldbus, etc, is going to commoditize the network and it's going to be all about the applications rather than the underlying technology. It's a bit like your cellphone – do you really care if it's GSM or CDMA? And five years down the road it won't be 15 suppliers on board but more like 100. I have no doubt about that.

Q: And the future for your organization?
A: When I started the Automation Standards Compliance Institute I looked at a lot of models for consortiums. There's Fieldbus Foundation, there's Profibus, there's Hart, in fact, there's a whole bunch of them. But I found that the best organizational model out there was Fieldbus Foundation – it's very well run and a lot of the same people are participating in WCI. So if you fast forward about five years down the road we should look a lot like them. They have regional divisions to provide support and that's something that we are keen to establish. Asia Pacific is likely to be the first regional extension of WCI outside of North America, followed by Europe.