Emerson Exchange 365

Competing protocol standards. IP addressability. Infrastructure security. IT/OT convergence. These are the kinds of things that keep industrial automation network engineers up at night. They're also among the leading concerns for plant managers hoping to make the most of today's rapidly evolving wireless technologies, according to Cisco Systems' Pascal Thubert and Paul Didier, who today presented an informative look at the future of field networking at the 2014 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Stuttgart, Germany.

Mr. Thubert, who serves as Tech Lead for Cisco's Enterprise Networking Labs in France, and Mr. Didier, Industry Solutions Architect for manufacturing at Cisco, discussed current industrial automation market drivers, scalability, deterministic networking, network virtualization, and flow isolation. They also covered one of the hottest topics in industrial networking—the Internet of Everything—which they predict will soon level the playing field for firms of all sizes seeking to leverage their investments in IT, data and analytics.

Making the case for wireless, Thubert illustrated the high installation and maintenance costs associated with traditional cable-based sensing systems. The improved process optimization and predictable maintenance characteristics of wireless result in less downtime and higher profitability, which in turn allow managers to justify installing more and better sensors wherever they can be connected. Identifying the full potential of those connection points is the key to designing a truly efficient operation, Thubert said.

“What people usually miss is the order of magnitude. For each ‘critical’ wired measurement there are hundreds of missing ones that could only be addressed through wireless. We're now aiming at a scale a thousand times larger than early wireless deployments,” Thubert said. “This larger scale will be achieved by combining the best of IT and OT [operational technology] to create the Industrial Internet. This will allow the collecting and processing of live ‘big data,’ which represent huge amounts of currently missing measurements by widely distributed sensing and analytics capabilities.”

During that time, Thubert said, current trends such as network function virtualization and software-defined networking will continue to shape the industry in a way that blurs the lines between hardware and software technologies. Time-sensitive networking will allow for more seamless redundancy, controlled latency, and zero congestion loss, while timeslotted channel-hopping self-protects against interference and offers greater flexibility for engineers and administrators.

As Thubert and Didier explained, individual plant networks will ultimately converge into a unified Industrial Internet. Applications such as people tracking or process security that are managed by WirelessHART networks with WiFi mesh backhauls typically suffer from a lack of end-to-end connectivity. A converged control network with HART-IP, meanwhile, would offer centralized IP management and improved overall ease of use, which translates into increased operational efficiency and profitability.

For IT/OT convergence to be fully realized, however, the core problem of IP addressability must be solved. The results of recent polls conducted by OnWorld Research, who reached out to over 100 plant managers, process integrators, and system engineers, indicate that addressability is a major factor in decisions regarding the adoption of wireless technologies in industrial automation settings. “For the countless smart objects that will create tens of billions of additional devices living on the Internet of Everything, the IPv6 protocol standard is the only viable way forward,” explained Didier.

“With further adoption of IPv6 in industrial standards and the convergence of IT and OT, a whole new range of use will be possible.” said Didier. “Device virtualization with less reliance on dedicated hardware; strengthened security mechanisms; multi-link subnets that enable unhindered mobility; improvements on existing generic capabilities—all of these innovations will help users and vendors achieve that most coveted of operational goals: Total harmonization.”