Self-organizing networks yield network reliabilities in excess of 99percent by enabling wireless devices to act as intermediate routers, thereby providing alternate paths (redundancy) when a message is not able to take a particular path. When process personnel hear the term wireless instruments, they immediately think, great, no wires. But how do you know if you are receiving good data on time, every time? To go a step further, what are the limitations of self-organizing wireless network reliability, and where should you apply it in a dynamic industrial environment? Can wireless field devices ever be reliable enough for today's complicated industrial environments? Network reliability is the ratio of received messages to sent messages between the gateway and the wireless devices in the network. This is a measure of the end user's ability to receive desired data from field devices. Network latency, associated with network reliability, is the amount of time it takes the message to travel wirelessly from the field device and have the host receive it. Overall network reliability depends on the sensor, wireless communication, host integration, and data management. The complete wireless network can only be as reliable as its weakest component.
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