Wireless interface to new and retrofitting of existing industrial systems for monitoring, controlling and data acquisition in a noisy industrial environment

Abstract

Wireless telephones systems are available for quite sometimes. However, wireless devices that can send and receive analog and digital data from industrial control process in a noisy industrial environment have just been introduced. Recently, Omnex Control Systems Inc. has introduced industrial friendly analog and digital wireless transceiver to reliably communicate under noisy industrial condition among sensors, transducers, final control elements, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and similar devices and systems. This wireless digital and analog conduit is a commercialized version of the spread spectrum license free 902-928 MHz frequency hopping communication techniques used by the defense industry. Since the system is license free and maintenance free wireless conduit, it eliminates costly and time consuming cable laying for new and retrofitting of existing project. This wireless conduit is an interference free link between remote devices and control room, it is ideal for a noisy industrial environment. The subject of this paper deals with monitoring, controlling, and acquiring data continuously from an industrial process using this wireless conduit. The authors plan to demonstrate the interfacing of an industrial process, transducers, and final control elements to a remotely located computer controlled data acquisition system. The monitoring and controlling of remote process via a reliable link without sacrificing the data integrity and loss of ability to analyze the acquired data will be discussed. We are proposing to show how this wireless conduit is a two-way monitoring and controlling solutions for a variety of industrial application in heavy interference environment where other radios fail to perform.