ISA100 to Be Demoed at ISA Expo 2007

The ISA100 standards committee, “Wireless Systems for Automation,” will host a demonstration booth at ISA EXPO 2007, 2-4 October at the Reliant Center in Houston, Texas. The multi-vendor technology demonstration will showcase the major principles of operation of the committee”s work, as well as products from over 15 vendors.

The ISA100 standard is being created as a family of standards designed to support many applications and many protocols through a single, integrated wireless network. The committee”s work aims to support co-existence with other standards operating in the 2.4GHz ISM band. The standard will use a single application layer, providing both native and tunneling protocol capability for broad usability. This is intended to help users protect their installed base investment by adding wireless adapters to existing devices while facilitating an evolutionary transition of field devices to embedded ISA100.11a wireless.

ISA100.11a will be the first standard released of the ISA100 family. It is focused on monitoring, alerting, and control for the process industries. The ISA100.11a standard has taken numerous steps to ensure co-existence with other radios operating in the 2.4GHz band. These steps include channel blacklisting, frequency hopping, direct sequence spread spectrum signaling, dynamic power control, low duty cycle operation, clear channel assessment, and forced frequency selection.

Over 250 companies and organizations, representing end-users, vendors, integrators, universities, and research labs, are actively involved in the open development of the ISA100 family of standards. Companies expected to participate in the ISA100 technology demonstration include AirSprite, Apprion, Arch Rock, Cirronet, Dust, Elpro, Emerson Process Managment, Endress+Hauser, Flowserve, GE, Honeywell, Invensys, MachineTalker, Omnex, Rockwell Automation, SensorLogic, and Yokogawa.

The companies will be showing a wide range of wireless instrumentation and applications in a concept demonstration based on existing wireless technologies.