According to officials from the Fieldbus Foundation, this technology initiative is based on shared interests in serving the needs of end users and suppliers of wireless systems in industrial automation.
The initiative will see Fieldbus Foundation and ISA enter into a cross-licensing agreement allowing the two organizations to collaborate on wireless networks. To enable the ISA100.15 working group to develop the wireless backhaul standard, it will be necessary to use extracts of Fieldbus Foundation specifications as well as parts of other ISA standards in development.
As part of the wireless backhaul network initiative, the Fieldbus Foundation and ISA will develop a standard to interface between different technologies suitable for backhaul networking; address wireless co-existence (frequency sharing) related to the backhaul networks; define prioritization of multiple applications and ensure quality of service; support multiple application protocol translators; and address security issues on backhaul networks. ISA will publish the technical documents as a standard within the ISA100 family of standards, and the standard will be jointly owned by the two organizations and used accordingly in the marketplace.