WirelessHART Technology
WirelessHART. Industrial, old-school, deterministic. Runs over IEEE 802.15.4, but feels more like your grandpa's fieldbus. Not long range. Not LPWAN. Just short, stable, and good enough to control a chemical plant without exploding anything. Messy? A little. Fancy? Only if you like Gantt charts and process valves.
Vendor and URL
This field-hardened beast is pushed by:
Main vendor: FieldComm Group (aka the HART mafia)
Official docs: https://fieldcommgroup.org/technologies/hart/wirelesshart
If the link’s dead, check your local DCS vendor’s FTP site. Or cry.
Technical Public Documentation
Yeah, they wrote docs. But you’ll need to register, pay, or sell your soul.
Full spec: Check FieldComm (paid access mostly)
GitHub repo: https://github.com/OpenFieldHub (community tools, not official)
Welcome to the industrial world – where specs live behind NDAs and legacy firewalls.
Overview
It talks to transmitters, actuators, valves – the hardcore process stuff. It extends classic HART (4-20mA, anyone?) into the wireless world. The goal: deterministic, synchronized data collection from sensors that don’t care about your startup’s Wi-Fi.
Architecture
Mesh network. Always. One gateway (boss), several routers (the workhorses), and field devices (the quiet types). Everything runs on tight time slots, like a factory drill sergeant’s dream. Cloud? Forget it. This stuff lives on-premise next to the PLC.
Device Roles
Gateway: speaks Modbus/HART IP on one side, WirelessHART on the other. Routers: field devices that forward packets – because mesh is life. Field devices: sensors and actuators. Send values, get configs, sometimes wake up angry.
Channelization
Operates in 2.4 GHz ISM band. Uses frequency hopping over 15 channels. Channel blacklist possible – especially if the IT guy starts screaming about interference. Static configs exist, but the network prefers to manage itself.
Frames
Based on IEEE 802.15.4 with a big old HART envelope on top. TDMA schedule. 10 ms time slots. MAC layer gets fancy with retries and acknowledgments. Payload? Small, but just enough for pressure readings and commands that say “open valve 12%”.
Networking
Mesh all the way. Dynamic routes. Redundant paths. Devices don’t need to know anything – the gateway tells them where to go. Peer-to-peer? No. Everything revolves around the gateway, like planets around a PLC.
Security
AES-128 encryption with session keys. Devices get their credentials during join. Network uses message counters and timestamps to stop replay attacks. Secure? Yes. Easy to debug when it breaks? No chance.
Networking Process
Device wakes up. Joins the network. Gets a time slot. Starts talking. Miss a slot? Try again in the next round. Everything is scheduled, nothing is chaotic. It’s like military radio discipline – but for thermocouples.
Use Cases
Chemical plants. Refineries. Wastewater stations. Anywhere Ethernet fears to tread and Wi-Fi gets laughed at. Perfect for low-data-rate, high-reliability, ultra-predictable environments. Not for your startup’s coffee machine. This is for real gear that hisses when you get too close.