Wireless systems featured in demo booth at ISA

The ISA100 standards committee, "Wireless Systems for Automation," will host a demonstration booth at ISA EXPO 2007, Oct. 2-4 at the Reliant Center in Houston. The multi-vendor technology demonstration will showcase the major principles of operation of the committee's work, and products from over

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 will also ensure 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 will help users protect their installed base investment by adding wireless adapters to existing devices while facilitating an evolutionary transition of their field devices to embedded ISA100.11a wireless.

"I believe that the great work done to date by the ISA100 Committee to develop an open standard will enable a universal wireless platform for field instruments to take advantage of. Much work remains to be done but our main goal remains to create a high-quality standard that is supported by end-users and vendors alike," said Paul Sereiko, President and CEO, AirSprite Technologies, Inc. and Co-Chair of ISA100 Marketing Work Group.

"Government led programs have allowed us, through core research and associations like ISA, to build universal, open standards that help improve industrial productivity by simplifying the adoption of new technologies," said ISA100 co-chair Wayne Manges of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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.

"The ISA100.11a draft standard's effort has been leveraging existing technology and standards where possible to allow compliant devices to be produced quickly and at a relatively low cost point. To achieve this goal, ISA is working with the IEEE, Foundation Fieldbus, IETF, and other such organizations to coordinate its efforts," said Pat Kinney, President, Kinney Consulting, and Co-Chair of ISA100.11a Working Group.

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. "The collaboration between end users and vendors on the ISA100 committee is what will truly make a difference in the end result," said Jim Reizner, Section Head, Corporate Engineering, Procter & Gamble. "There are many end users represented here, and we're all providing input based on our needs and uses to help the committee develop a standard that will work for us."

Companies expected to participate in the ISA100 technology demonstration include AirSprite,Apprion, Arch Rock, Cirronet, Dust, Elpro, Emerson Process, 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.

For more information about ISA100, or ISA EXPO 2007, visit