WirelessHART Products from Phoenix Contact Received Industrial Awards

In 2012, Phoenix Contact received two awards for WirelessHART technology: Readers of the Control Engineering periodical chose the WirelessHART adapter for the Engineer’s Choice Award 2012, in the category “Network integration – Wireless I/O”. Phoenix Contact received the second award from TechQuest Pennsylvania as technology supplier of 2012 for its innovation in the area of WirelessHART technology. TechQuest pays tribute to companies who offer technological applications, devices, resources or additional solutions that help improve customers’ processes.

Phoenix Contact has a WirelessHART gateway with integrated WLAN support in its portfolio. The gateway connects up to 250 WirelessHART devices with a network, and by converting data into Modbus TCP, permits simple integration into practically any process control system. Further, the integrated WLAN can be used as an alternative connection to the process control system, allowing the gateway to be installed closer to the monitored HART devices in the field.

The WirelessHART adapter allows up to four HART devices to be connected to a single adapter, therefore reducing investment costs and making it far simpler and faster to retrofit and expand plants and systems. In addition, the adapter supplements 4–20 mA signal cables or replaces them completely. It can be connected to existing HART devices in the field to enable data that cannot be transferred using 4–20 mA signal cables to be transferred by radio to a new system. The existing system based on 4–20 mA remains intact.

The WirelessHART gateway and the adapter have international approvals for Class I, Zone 2 Ex applications. The technology on which WirelessHART is based gives this wireless standard its ruggedness and reliability. TSMP (Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol) offers redundancy as well as fault tolerance and supports frequency hopping in addition to meshed networks. The protocol has also proven to be reliable in demanding industrial environments. The result is a wireless network with a short range that can be easily installed without any special know-how. It automatically adapts to changing environments and can be simply expanded when required.