Control on the Wire(less)

Since the industrial revolution, industrial control had relied on tightly coupled systems to transmit control signals. Industrial plants have used "modern" control via wired electronic signals for over half a century, making the market ripe for a new technology to disrupt the current methods.

Advances in wireless technologies now promise to disrupt that paradigm, and sooner rather than later. Given the ever-increasing rate of development (and the increasing need to connect previously stranded assets), wireless technologies are on the cusp of fulfilling an entirely new range of industrial control applications.

Wired Control
Since its beginning, industrial control has mainly relied on tightly coupled linkages between the field devices and the control mechanisms. In earlier times this coupling was accomplished mechanically or pneumatically. More recently, industry employed wires to convey electrical signals. In fact, most control performed in manufacturing facilities today uses wires to convey signals to and from the field. This generally involves a 4-20mA signal generated by a measurement device in the field to transmit a process state to the controller, followed by another 4-20mA signal generated by the controller to convey a desired response to a field actuator.

"Control on the Wire"
Nearly 20 years ago, FOUNDATION fieldbus technology led the process industries into the concept of "control on the wire." The concept lever-ages the higher processing power available in digital (rather than analog) field devices to execute control algorithms and increased speed of digital communications.

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Keywords: Control, Wireless, Foundation Fieldbus, Energy Harvesting, PID, ARC Advisory Group.