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Optimizing Wireless Diagnostics with OPC

Wireless communication is becoming increasingly popular for factory and process control automation systems.


Part of this growth, says Jim Ralston, wireless sales engineer for ProSoft Technology Inc., Bakersfield, Calif., is due to the emergence of reliable radio frequency (RF) technologies capable of operating consistently in harsh industrial environments. But as more systems become dependant on wireless networks, it is important to include intelligent diagnostics to detect network degradation and prevent communication failures before they occur.

Ralston notes that diagnostic techniques vary greatly by industrial wireless manufacturer. There are some “industrial” wireless devices that do not include any diagnostic information at all. Either the data is received correctly or not. These are understandably very difficult to troubleshoot when problems are encountered. Other systems provide off-line diagnostics, for which communication must be stopped in order to access the diagnostic information. These systems at least provide some insight into the cause, but only after a failure has occurred, Ralston observes.

Online wireless diagnostics, on the other hand, provide continuous monitoring of wireless performance and hardware conditions. These tools can not only detect a failure, but show if conditions are degrading as well. Because the diagnostic metrics are being monitored in real time, there is no need to shut communications down to check the system. 
However, there is no free lunch. Because the diagnostic data travels over the same wireless link as the system data, performance can degrade when diagnostics are active, says Ralston. In systems with a large number of remotes and high amounts of data transfer, online diagnostics may be impractical.

Many methods

 Methods for accessing online diagnostic information vary by manufacturer and wireless system. Some wireless serial systems use a second serial port, and communication is done using a menu-driven interface accessible from a dumb terminal program (such as a HyperTerminal). Other online diagnostic systems use a proprietary software program by which the personal computer (PC) attaches to either the secondary serial port or is part of the Ethernet network, and displays vital information about the RF network using a proprietary software program. 

Still other systems (commonly those based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ IEEE 802.11 standard) have embedded Web servers for diagnostic information. The diagnostic information is then displayed using a Web browser. In Ethernet-based wireless networks, potentially anyone on the Ethernet network can view the diagnostic pages of local and remote wireless equipment.

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