Hardware challenges and their resolution in advancing WirelessHART

The requirements and solutions for industrial wireless mesh networks are much more challenging and complicated than those for the consumer mesh networks. This puts additional stress on existing hardware chips on the market for wireless mesh networks, which started as products marketed towards consumers. The reason why we talk about the IEEE 802.15.4 chips is because most of the industrial wireless mesh network standards converge on IEEE 802.15.4 as the physical and MAC layer standards. In this paper we selectively chronicle the challenges we faced with the IEEE 802.15.4 chips, the products targeted with ZigBee for the consumer market, to advance WirelessHART, the technology targeted for industrial process control. We also describe our resolution over the challenges and offer our wish list for the next generation IEEE 802.15.4 chips.