A recent survey conducted by ON World concludes that the transition to standards-based wireless sensor networking (WSN) is one of the largest technology advancements for industrial automation.
ON World worked 216 industry vendors, end users and professionals from the International Society of Automation (ISA), HART Communication Foundation (HCF) and the Wireless Industrial Networking Alliance (WINA), to complete their biggest survey to date.
"Users of industrial wireless sensing and control have been demanding standards but the hope of convergence between WirelessHART and ISA100.11a is in doubt," said Mareca Hatler, ON World's research director. "Despite this standards confusion and a brutal economy, the industrial WSN market has doubled over the last two years."
According to the survey, 57% of end user are using pilot testing WSN systems, 20% of end users have set up more than 100 wireless field devices and 75% of people who have adopted WSN are using wireless mesh protocol for a portion of their wireless field devices. The report also showed that 39% of end users used WirelessHART — a 13% increase from ON World's 2010 survey.
The survey results concluded that end users preferences for wireless mesh standards remain scattered since an equal amount of end users favor WirelessHART or both WirelessHART and ISA100.11a.
Only 46% of end users said WSN is an adoption inhibitor today, compared to 17% in the 2010 survey. Does this mean end users are less concerned about data reliability today?
