ISA100 wireless systems standard jumps through another hoop

ISA’s work is aimed at developing a family of wireless standards, and the overall principles of operation are now ready for release to the committee for review and comment. ISA says that the ISA100.11a editorial group wrote its document as “a cohesive overview and summary of the individual task group resolutions at this point in time”. In other words, the details are yet to be defined in the draft standard document – which is when the wrangling is likely to kick in. “We had tremendous user support at the meeting, which is a very important component of our standards work,” says ISA100 chair Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Labs. “This standard is for the end user, so the more end user input we have, the better our standard will be.” Meanwhile, Jim Reizner, section head, corporate engineering, Procter & Gamble, says: “I am extremely happy with the way that the ISA100.11a editorial team is dealing with the contradictory requirements of systems that offer options, flexibility and differentiation among vendors and the end-user desires. The team has come up with a novel method of meeting both sets of requirements.” ISA100 for Process Automation is intended to provide reliable and secure operation for non-critical monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, open loop control and ‘soft’ closed loop control applications. The standard defines the OSI stack, system management, gateway and security specifications for low data rate wireless connectivity with fixed, portable, and moving devices with no battery or very limited battery consumption requirements.