Mesh networking update: Empowering the mobile worker

When it comes to working wirelessly, infrastructure is the big buck. In the scheme of things, wireless devices are relatively inexpensive. Hard wiring the network devices and access points is the hard work and the major expense.

That’s why mesh networking has been so intriguing. The idea is that you enable some of the wireless hardware, like RFID tags or sensors, with the ability to not only receive a signal but to also transmit a signal back to a central point. Think of it as a bucket brigade for information: One device can hand the information off to the next device and so on until it gets to where it needs to go. Better yet, the devices on the network can decide based on who’s already busy with data and who’s not the most efficient way to get that info back to a gateway.

Like a lot of ideas that popped up during the Internet boom, mesh networking has taken a little time to percolate, but according to Dan Bodnar, a marketing director with Intermec, mesh is starting to get play. Process industries, like oil and gas refineries and chemical plants, that use a lot of sensors to monitor their equipment, have been early adopters. It just makes sense to enable those sensors than to try to implement a wireless network out of doors across the broad expanse of a refinery. Now, those same end users are piggybacking on the mesh network to empower their mobile workers – the technicians who may be collecting data or performing maintenance, overhaul and repair tasks in the field.   

“In the process industry, you might have a pump or generator that you need to monitor at all times,” says Bodnar. “Sensors might be monitoring pressure, temperature and other things. Those sensors form a mesh network that can transmit information back to a gateway and then to the process monitoring system in the control room. You don’t have to provide a hardwired signal.” The benefit: One person in a control room can monitor an entire system, rather than a whole army of technicians walking the grounds.

Until recently, the mobile workers who maintained that equipment were still collecting the data associated with those tasks the old fashioned way: Writing it down on a clipboard and entering the info into a database at some later date, or keying it into a mobile computer and then uploading it after a shift. By then, the data is out of date.

“With mobile devices that can communicate over the mesh network, that worker can now access work orders, inventory systems if he needs a spare part, or report back to a system of record in a maintenance or compliance system in real time,” says Bodnar. “You’re getting the advantage of real-time data from the assets without the infrastructure cost of running wires out there.”

While Modern doesn’t typically cover the process industry, I can see other applications for mesh networking that are relevant to discrete manufacturers. Yard management, for instance, especially over large outdoor storage yards. Bodnar says that some discrete manufacturers have show interest in adapting the technology to the MRO operations around their equipment. The holdup: “Frankly, there has been some reluctance to introduce more wireless activity onto the plant floor out of concerns that there may not be enough bandwidth or that the signal may interfere with the operation of other equipment and systems,” says Bodnar.

Those are legitimate concerns, and are similar those raised a decade ago when wireless was introduced to the distribution center floor. The industry overcame them then, and led to real advances in productivity as a result. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens with mesh networking today.