Yokogawa Claims World First with Wireless Release

Yokogawa Electric Corporation has announced that it has developed the world’s first field wireless devices based on the ISA100.11a industrial wireless communications standard and will release them to the market this July. A trial kit that will allow customers to experience the advantages of Yokogawa wireless products is also planned.

The wireless products include an EJX-B series differential pressure and pressure transmitter, a YTA series temperature transmitter, and an integrated field wireless gateway for field sensor networks. The devices are designed to run on explosion-proof batteries that can be replaced in hazardous locations. Yokogawa also plans to develop solar batteries as energy sources for the products.

Yokogawa says that these field wireless devices are expected to satisfy a wide variety of requirements in the industrial automation field, and to help companies achieve ever higher levels of productivity, the company intends to continue to develop further kinds of field wireless devices for both monitoring and control applications, and is even proposing the development of new field digital networks that integrate wireless and wired technologies.

Despite accepted benefits such as reduced wiring and the ability to install devices in difficult locations, the so-far limited use of wireless instruments in industrial automation applications is, according to Yokogawa, due to the lack of technologies that ensure high reliability, real-time response, environmental resistance, and explosion-proof protection, as well as the absence until quite recently of an industrial communications standard for field wireless devices.

The new field wireless devices based on the ISA 100.11a standard are said to fully complement Yokogawa’s measurement, control, and information solutions and are expected to make a significant contribution to the realization of the company’s VigilantPlant concept of seeing clearly, knowing in advance, and acting with agility.