ISA100 wireless standard approved by IEC

The International Society of Automation (ISA) has announced that ANSI/ISA-100.11a-2011, ‘Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation: Process Control and Related Applications’, has been approved by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as an international standard and will be published by the end of the year with the designation IEC 62734.

Since its initial approval by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2011, ISA-100.11a-compliant devices have found global use, with more than 130,000 connected devices reported in 2012 and over 1 billion hours of operational service at customer sites.

ISA-100.11a was originally developed with international collaboration following ISA’s open consensus process as accredited by ANSI, which requires participation and voting by experts from multiple stakeholder groups - including end-users in addition to suppliers - ensuring that all views and needs are taken into account. It provides reliable and secure wireless operation for monitoring, alerting, supervisory control, and open- and closed-loop control applications.

The standard defines the protocol suite, system management, gateways and security specifications for wireless connectivity with devices supporting limited power consumption requirements. The focus is to address the performance needs of process manufacturing applications, which include monitoring and process control where latencies on the order of 100 ms can be tolerated, with optional behaviour for shorter latencies.

IEC 62734 utilises IPv6, adheres to the OSI model and uses object technology - all of which are necessary to support the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT). In addition, the standard fully supports the ETSI EN 300 328 v1.8.1 European Union specification taking effect in 2015. Current industrial wireless products branded as ISA100 Wireless already meet this requirement.