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he results of a recent online survey found strong interest in wireless sensor networking technologies among end users and system integrators in the industrial automation marketplace. Forty-five percent of respondents are considering deploying a wireless sensor network in 2005, and nearly 70% are researching wireless sensors for industrial monitoring applications.
Sensicast Systems, a provider of wireless sensor networking products and solutions, and B&B Electronics, a manufacturer of data communication products for industrial automation, conducted the survey.
The survey asked about cost savings associated with wireless sensor networks and found 58% of respondents believe they would save more than $100 in wiring and labor costs for each wireless sensor deployed, and 33% anticipated more than $250 savings per sensor. This points to considerable cost savings potential across the industrial enterprise. In addition, nearly 70% of respondents plan to use wireless sensors within harsh radio frequency environments such as those commonly found in industrial automation.
Other findings include:
- Fifty-five percent prefer using the 2.4-GHz frequency band; 25% prefer 900 MHz
- Nearly half of the respondents think battery operation of wireless sensors is important to their applications
- Forty-one percent of respondents are familiar with the ZigBee mesh networking standard; however, 61% of those familiar find ZigBee support important for future interoperability
