Sensing Technology - Future Advancements

Expected Challenges

Despite their miniaturization, today’s sensors are extremely powerful and receptive. They have low failure rates, and consume less power than ever before. In the near future, enterprises can expect greater miniaturization and further advances in electronics from sensors, as well as lower prices, improved capabilities that ensure they consume less power, greater responsiveness, and a higher tolerance to failure.

Many process plants have already installed sensors and digitized operations for process control. They have connected major processes in their plants, and can detect, report, and analyze data to achieve higher levels of process efficiency. The next challenge is to derive value from sensemaking, not mere sensing. Achieving increasingly profitable and sustainable operations requires more fully utilizing high-fidelity plant data, which has been gathered more extensively.

• The swift evolution of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will further expand and complement its application and scope. IIoT sensors monitor a range of attributes including temperature, vibration, pressure, and water-quality. These sensors are connected to solutions which leverage edge, fog, and cloud computing resources to monitor and manage asset performance and energy efficiency.
• Further advances in sensing technology will not be limited to sensing devices. By converging intelligent sensing with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), it will support agile decision-making and drive performance optimization.
• With the growing demand for smart products, and the acceleration of digitization within organizations, the role and importance of sensors will continue to grow.

Yokogawa is at the forefront of these innovations, and offers comprehensive solutions for a plant’s operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) needs. These solutions leverage the deep domain knowledge required to analyze both data and overall process flows to create more optimal models. By deploying predictive maintenance and operations with advanced analytics, industrial plants can drive significant returns from operational optimization.

Reliable and Functional Wireless Solutions

Yokogawa's line of wireless solutions includes "Field Wireless", which are compliant under the ISA100.11a* as an operational technology sensor; and the “Sushi Sensor”, which is an industrial IoT solution.

Yokogawa offers field wireless systems that comply with the proven and highly reliable ISA100 Wireless standard and help ensure stable and safe plant operations. Reliable and scalable field wireless network infrastructure, combined with a variety of sensors, offers the perfect solution to monitor and control plant operations.

Yokogawa's specialized Sushi Sensor is a wireless solution for IIoT. It uses LoRaWAN, a low-power wide-area (LPWA) wireless data communication protocol. Optimized for IIoT applications, the Sushi Sensor enables online monitoring of an equipment's operating conditions, which helps improve asset maintenance and prevents failure by detecting abnormalities at an early stage.

* Wireless communications standard ISA100.11a is approved by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as the IEC 62734 international standard.