Remember the wireless wars of about 10 years ago? No? Good.
But Emerson was the leader of the WirelessHART camp. One or two other companies led the ISA100 camp. The technologies are quite similar with just enough differences to make them incompatible. A movement to converge the standards faltered.
Then the entire issue went away. Just as I told them all at the time, the market will decide. And it did.
Both wireless technologies, and products supporting each, still exist. So, Emerson has released a new product to bridge the gap.
Emerson announced a new dual-mode wireless gateway which supports both IEC 62951 WirelessHART and ISA100.11a industrial wireless communications standards. This latest addition expands Emerson’s wireless portfolio and provides customers an easy way to take advantage of WirelessHART technologies from many suppliers.
“With our new dual-mode gateway, we’re excited to give ISA100.11a users an easy path to the improved operating performance they are seeking,” said Bob Karschnia, vice president and general manager, wireless, Emerson Automation Solutions. “WirelessHART has proven in 10 years of successful deployments around the world to provide the highest reliability and most robust self-organizing, self-healing network, for the lowest cost.”
With more than 31,000 WirelessHART installations worldwide and over 9.1 billion operating hours, Emerson leads the automation industry in wireless networking. Emerson’s wireless portfolio helps customers extend their automation ecosystem for improved operating reliability with sensing, monitoring and control technologies such as temperature, pressure, level, corrosion, flow, acoustic, gas and vibration, plus wireless adapters for valve positioners and digital valve controllers.
Serving as the backbone of a wireless infrastructure, wireless gateways and access points increase the amount of real-time information available to automation systems, applications and analytics tools to help organizations improve responsiveness and decision making. Critically, they must possess robust, “always-on” security to limit network vulnerability. When deployed efficiently, they can require the least hardware necessary to keep costs low while operating reliability high. Lastly, customers consistently seek ease-of-deployment as a key consideration.
A future release of Emerson’s dual-mode wireless gateway will be integrated into the Cisco 1552WU, a combined WirelessHART and WiFi solution for industrial hardened wireless, and will seamlessly integrate into Emerson’s industry-leading security and network management tools, including Emerson’s Plantweb Insight applications for Industrial IoT which help industrial facilities improve operations and maintenance by simplifying asset monitoring.
