The combined communications capability of the three protocols will help ease integration tasks.

The HART Communication Foundation, Fieldbus Foundation and PI (Profibus and Profinet International) have joined forces to create an architecture for a new WirelessHART gateway device. The device allows a WirelessHART network of devices to communicate bi-directionally with a host automation system via the Fieldbus Foundation High Speed Ethernet (HSE) protocol or the PI protocol, Profibus.

When completed, the architecture and its related specification provide a standard structure for others in the industry to design and build the gateway device. The specification covers the three primary functions needed for the integration: gateway configuration, wireless sensor configuration and system operation.

Gateway configuration is performed by the gateway engineering application in the host automation system. This application uses client/server communications over HSE or Profibus to configure the I/O mapping of the wireless sensor parameters (such as device address, device tag, process variables, process alarms and other data) into database objects. Once the gateway is configured, the wireless sensor engineering application is used to bring the wireless sensors online. Once the gateways and the wireless sensors are configured, normal system operation can begin. The gateway will scan through its list of wireless devices and request each device to send its parameter data to the gateway.

For more information on the the system, visit the HART Communication Foundation website.