HCF, ISA Elaborate on Wireless Way Forward

The HART Communication Foundation (HCF, www.hartcomm.org) Executive Director, Ron Helson, and representatives of HCF member companies met with the ISA100 Wireless Systems for Automation Standards committee during ISA 2007 (2-4 October, Houston, Texas) to assist in outlining an approach to accommodate and eventually integrate the new WirelessHART Communication standard and the developing ISA100 standard. The agreed upon approach will attempt to accommodate the HART 7 wireless protocol in Release 1 of the ISA100.11a standard through a dual-gateway architecture followed by a potentially more integrated approach in Release 2 of the ISA standard.

"The ISA100-WirelessHART Analysis Team is evaluating how the WirelessHART protocol within HART 7 can be incorporated into the ISA100.11a standard while remaining consistent with the objectives of the ISA100 family of standards," said ISA100 Co-Chair Pat Schweitzer of Exxon Mobil. "The most important part of that evaluation is the obligation to continue our commitment to the end user, and we’re confident that our final decisions will accomplish that goal."

The committee’s decision defined options for future evaluation, including dual-stack end devices for integration at the device level, tunneling (pack at the device level, unpack at a higher level), and future integration at the MAC, DLL, and NET/TRAN levels.

For more information about WirelessHART and HART Communication technology, go to www.hartcomm.org. For more information about ISA100, or any of the ISA standards, visit www.isa.org/standards.