[PDF] Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks monitoring, control and automation

It is generally acknowledged that data communications in the process control segment of manufacturing began in 1976 with the introduction of the “Data Hiway” as the data communications element of the Honeywell TDC-2000, the first commercial distributed control system (DCS). Prior to that introduction, data transfer between units of
manufacturing automation systems either did not exist or were proprietary point-topoint serial and parallel wired data links

Products being manufactured are generally classified as flowing fluids, gases, powders, or solids formed into sheets. Characteristic is that the product being produced is totally contained within the manufacturing equipment and is generally not visible to the humans engaged in supervising its production. The only exception to this are the sheet-formed products that are visible, but are contained by the manufacturing
machinery while being processed. Industries in this market segment include: oil and gas, petroleum refining, petrochemicals, fine chemicals, heavy chemicals, cement, glass, plastics and polymers, cement, lime, iron and steel, alumina and aluminum, pulp and paper, and sheet plastics. Products are generally produced by chemical reaction of raw materials or the physical separation of the contents of a raw material by some
process such as distillation, filtration, etc.

Automation of continuous manufacturing processes depends upon the synchronous acquisition of data, computation of a manipulated variable, and monitoring for abnormal conditions on a continuous basis in order to hold the process at a steady state. The feedback control computations may be done in ruggedized process controllers or may be distributed to field instruments themselves when equipped with the appropriate communications network. Information on the performance of the process
control system is reported to human process operators via the HMI (Human Machine Interface).