design Sensors Wireless networking for the industrial IoT Monitoring the condensate conductivity on a boiler can indicate the presence of a cooling water leak long before hydrogen embrittlement of the boiler’s furnace tubes causes it to fail. Measuring power consumption at a discrete level can reveal the precise energy cost of a specific process and predict mechanical failure if a particular machine suddenly begins to draw more electricity. Observing the temperature of a pump can alert an operator to shut it down before it overheats, and automatically shutting off the lights in a parking garage when no humans are present produces immediate savings in energy costs. Unfortunately, many sensors need to do their jobs in locations that make wired data communications and AC power installations impractical. Even if the installation would be feasible and the costs would be reasonable, it’s not always possible to negotiate a right of way for the cabling. Fortunately, new technologies are coming on line that provide low-power wireless solutions that extend the network edge to include difficult locations while simultaneously providing ‘five nines’ (99.999%) uptime. Monitoring and measuring even very simple parameters improves processes, reduces downtime and saves money. By Mike Fahrion, Director of Product Management, B&B Electronics the network nodes will reroute through another, for a frequency and path diverse self-managing mesh network. New nodes can be added or subtracted at any time, as the network is self-forming and self-healing (Figure 2). The end result is ‘five nines’ uptime for the network as a whole, even if communications through one of the individual nodes are temporarily blocked. This also makes SmartMesh IP networks highly scalable. Devices can transmit data over long distances by passing data through intermediate devices to reach more distant ones. Thus, the Figure 1: Smart networks will be able to adapt to changing RF conditions Based on the wireless IEEE 802.15.4e standard, SmartMesh IP mesh networks provide excellent connectivity for remote devices, even in harsh, dynamically changing RF environments (Figure 1). In a SmartMesh IP network, every node on the network serves as a router. The nodes can all communicate with one another, and also with the network gateway if the gateway is within range. Each node can receive data from any other network node that is within range, and transmit data to any other network node that is within range. If one path to the network gateway fails, electronicspecifier.com 29