New

‘HART’ for an
Old Standard
Has HART 7 given this old standby a new lease on life?
by John Rezabek

The HART Communications protocol has been around for and 90s. But many plants are still running on this legacy in-
more then 20 years, and is perhaps the only one from its gen- stalled base, and many of those may remain that way for years
eration whose installed base continues to grow. With more to come.
than 20 million intelligent devices installed, you might won- Safety-instrumented systems (SIS) can account for two-
der whether a new and expanded specification amounts to “fix- thirds of the I/O in some processes or production sites, and
ing what ain’t broke.” Ed Ladd, of the HART Communication even today, few SIL-rated logic solvers support either native
Foundation (HCF, www.hartcomm.org), says, “Our most re- HART or any other fieldbus I/O. Users who try to exploit wire-
cent report shows more than 70% of all process instruments less or HART 7 diagnostics for safety applications may find
shipped are HART-enabled.” themselves straying a bit far from the herd. A plant near me,
By short-circuiting the bogged-down ISA SP-100 path to for example, is implementing WirelessHART to provide sec-
a wireless standard, HART 7 allows suppliers and end users ondary level indications on storage tanks. Its tanks contain
to begin manufacturing, selling and implementing wireless substances much less benign than milk, and whether a wire-
networks in a way that wasn’t previously possible. Along the less installation provides any independent protection layer is
way, the architects of the new standard seized the opportu- worthy of some debate. Will HART 7 features rescue users
nity to plug some holes that increasingly were seen as fa- who might be poised to “jump too soon?”
tal flaws relative to more modern standards like Foundation Since today’s wireless transmitters typically “go to sleep”
fieldbus (FF). With some major EPC firms in both hemi- for anywhere from 60 sec to 1 hour or more (primarily to
spheres saying that up to 70% or more of projects adopting optimize battery life—they are capable of sub-second mea-
FF for large expansions, additions and greenfield sites, and surement and transmission), they “wake up” to make a mea-
with the successful demonstration of FF for SIL-rated pro- surement and transmit it in a fundamentally asynchronous
cess safety interlock applications, concern that HART was fashion. Consequently, the old HART model of master-slave
in danger of losing its dominant market position is not un- polling had to be adjusted to one that accommodated con-
reasonable. Will HART 7’s new enhancements bring it up siderably more field device autonomy. This same property
to par in the eyes of the decision makers who wish to exploit will be part of new “wired” HART 7 devices, so they now
state-of-the-art digital integration of field devices? can independently send time-critical, time-stamped alerts to
Like other fieldbus protocols, HART was poorly supported, a host that has the smarts to “hear” them. One will not have
if at all, in the large legacy DCS and PLC systems of the 1980s to wait on host or asset management system based “polling”
 FIELDBUS

to detect a condition that needs more urgent attention—the device should implement the functionality, and there is no
transmitter sends the message along with a time stamp im- ITK (interoperability test kit) to test functions such as this.”
mediately when the condition is detected. How quickly HART data is accessed hinges greatly on the
Present-day HART 5 and later devices have a status bit host implementation as well. Some hosts, like those from In-
that’s set when the device has an issue, and if the host is set vensys Process Systems (www.ips.invensys.com), devote one
up to read it, it can subsequently poll for more detailed infor- HART modem to each and every I/O point.
mation about the problem. How well this all happens, how “We see very little difference in the speed with which diag-
fast it happens, or whether it happens at all, is worth some in- nostic data comes up between HART and FF—it’s essentially
vestigation on the part of end users who are aiming to exploit the same,” says Charlie Piper, senior development program
these features. If you’ve implemented any OPC, you have manager at IPS in Foxborough. If your host shares a HART
doubtless noticed that compliance to the standard is very modem across eight inputs or outputs, the performance can di-
much a matter of interpretation and has been the source of minish greatly, and using HART multiplexors that poll 16 to 24
many headaches for end users. HART has always provided devices each is proportionately more sluggish.
test tools for manufacturers to validate their devices confor- Some suppliers have improvements in the making, such as
mance to the standard, but the degree to which a feature is the “Charm” I/O solution to be offered by Emerson. Clearly
implemented or exploited can vary widely, especially on the suppliers are sensitive to the fact that sluggish updates of HART
host end. diagnostics are not meeting the needs of end users.
Eric Schnipke, process control specialist at the INEOS The I/O from IPS is capable of polling individual HART de-
Acrylonitrile (www.ineosnitriles.com) facility in Lima, Ohio, vices at sub-second rates. Piper adds, “This unlocks HART sec-
remarks, “We recently installed a new HART-capable con- ondary variables for use directly in process control schemes and
trol system with the hope of bringing in engineering units allows reliable real-time and historic trending of interesting vari-
and secondary variables of all HART devices, but quickly ables like ‘actual valve position,’ as seen by the positioners.”
realized that the older HART revisions were not supported Pat Schweitzer, co-chair of the ISA100 committee on in-
by the system.” dustrial wireless automation, sees the use of this sort of val-
It’s estimated that fewer than 20% of end users with ex- ue-added information as key to getting HART and Wire-
isting HART-smart devices are using HART for more than lessHART out of the “configure and re-range” rut where many
initial configuration and re-ranging. If the end-user commu- users leave it. While native I/O card support for HART 7 is
nity consists of few pioneers blazing the trail, we are at the still under development at most system suppliers, the promise
mercy of the supplier community to do the right thing, and for improvements in update times is encouraging and should
advanced users are on the wrong end of the Pareto charts. facilitate better utilization of its new capabilities.
“We have to do what the market demands” says an engi- One of the new capabilities of HART 7 is support for au-
neer at a major DCS supplier. “HART, Foundation fieldbus, tonomous alerts, akin to the “device alerts” as implemented
Profibus—we support them all, and the specs keep chang- for Foundation fieldbus by Emerson’s DeltaV. Fieldbus Foun-
ing. With finite resources, we continuously prioritize our dation and Profibus specs now incorporate NAMUR NE-107
investments in those areas where we anticipate the greatest guidelines for diagnostic messages, and this fieldbus capabil-
value will be delivered to the clients.” ity is being extended to HART as well.
Schnipke hit a few speed bumps during hot cutover: “DeltaV with AMS has supported user-configurable priori-
“Once you have the system, there’s no guarantee you’ll be tization and classification of PlantWeb alerts in a manner that
able to make use of all of your HART devices or that all de- closely paralleled the NAMUR standard, since the introduc-
vices from the same vendor will behave consistently. Two tion of the Fieldvue DVC 6000 positioner and similar fieldbus
different versions of valve positioners from the same ven- devices,” says Duncan Schleiss, vice president of marketing
dor did not have the same engineering units. This was the for DeltaV. “When implemented in coming revisions, both
source of much confusion when configuring the XD_Scale HART and fieldbus alerts will allow routing and prioritization
(transducer scale) of the associated analog output blocks.” per the NE-107 standard.”
Users attempting to use some of the advanced features This sort of serendipity is no coincidence, but a direct out-
have been experiencing more frustration. For example, one growth of the EDDL (Enhanced Electronic Device Descrip-
end user is aiming to use the HART range-change bit to tor Language) cooperation project between HART, Founda-
flag when a technician makes a range change using a field tion fieldbus and Profibus. Fieldbus Foundation will be testing
communicator that doesn’t match the host. “You’ll find that (fieldbus) devices and hosts for conformance to the standard,
the function isn’t clearly specified. Each vendor has imple- already released as an option in the latest ITK for field devices.
mented the function differently—or ignored it. There is no Presently such testing for HART features is in beta mode, but
definition of what a host should do with the bit or how a it’s reasonable to think other host suppliers will take advantage
 FIELDBUS

of the synergies created by the EDDL cooperation project and new lease on life, but few see it as replacing or eliminating
create parallel accommodations for new HART 7 instruments. Foundation fieldbus and Profibus. BP’s Oram has great in-
HCF’s Ladd says, “A team of HCF member companies has terest in HART developments, but so far not to the exclusion
been working on EDD-enabled host testing requirements for of FF: “[Our] stated preference for greenfield projects will
over a year. We expect to have EDD-enabled hosts registered remain, for the foreseeable future, FF. But we see HART
in 2009.” fighting back strongly.”
Sorting and prioritization of the tidal wave of new diag- Another end user says, “The perception is that HART
nostic messages generated by new digitally integrated field is somehow simpler than Foundation fieldbus. That is half
devices is a key enabler for end users, who otherwise would true if you only use HART for basic configuration chores
be dealing with an ugly and potentially incomprehensible and don’t try to do any asset management or control.”
“alarm flood” of device alerts. Users who want to exploit their existing installed wired
WirelessHART is a huge development, but similarities to HART devices will find they’ll need a board change to sup-
the multi-headed hydra that was spawned by the “fieldbus port advanced features such as the NAMUR NE-107 func-
wars” of the 1990’s can’t be dismissed. WirelessHART is a tionality, at which point a fieldbus device upgrade becomes
bona-fide open and less-than-proprietary standard, but not much more competitive.
all the supplier-sailors are happily boarding the HART boat So will end users choose HART when fieldbus is an op-
just yet. Still, many users appear willing to bet that technolo- tion? At INEOS, Schnipke isn’t sure even enhanced HART
gies competing with WirelessHART will eventually become will supplant FF where the choice exists: “With the excep-
the Betamax of wireless protocols, leaving their choice as the tion of safety systems and WirelessHART, systems will have
de facto standard. a difficult time competing with Foundation fieldbus for mar-
Chevron foresees a huge uptick in the use of WirelessHART ket share regardless of the improvements in HART 7.”
after it managed to satisfy the IT police that it could be done A pragmatic end user at a Gulf Coast refinery adds, “I will
without risk to the IT and PCS network. “The new wireless still be looking for ways to extract continuous data from my
system is reliable and has passed our rigorous IT security re- previously installed base of HART equipment, which will not
view,” said Mohammad Heidari, Chevron’s automation engi- likely be replaced during my career. I’ll take what I can get. but
neer. At an onshore production site, Chevron deployed almost I’m not converting much—if any—of the installed base to any
700 units this year, all in a monitor mode. version of HART where I have a choice to go to fieldbus.”
Across the Atlantic, Paul Oram, senior controls consultant Ralph Hartman, engineering consultant for Saudi Aramco
for BP’s Exploration and Production says, “Fieldbus has made does not see any change in his company’s FF direction. “In
very little impact on our brownfield plants. HART and particu- the hardwired world, we’re Foundation fieldbus for all green-
larly wireless HART can be more easily retrofitted.” field projects. Of course, we use HART devices for ESD, but
In contrast, Dr. Abdelghani Daraiseh, engineering spe- all regulatory control is FF. We are heavily involved in FF
cialist at Saudi Aramco expects his company will wait on the SIS, so whenever that happens we will be using FF for our
ISA standard. “Our direction is to use SP100 as a single wire- safety systems. I do not see this changing.”
less system for various plant applications, including Founda- EDDL cooperation and host supplier recognition of the
tion fieldbus. There are significant cost implications, simplic- opportunity to offer distinctive support for all field device
ity and reliability in using SP100 and subsequent standards digital integration protocols holds great promise for end us-
and product releases. The use of WirelessHART within our ers. HART 7—properly supported and implemented at the
plants is limited to addressing immediate business needs not host end—could render certified devices indistinguishable
addressed by SP100 due to the standardization and product from FF and Profibus PA devices in terms of diagnostic sup-
offering delays.” port, speed and suitability for process control. But users aim-
At this point there’s great potential for the 900 MHz and 2.4 ing to exploit functionality at this level are still advised to
GHz bands—already being consumed by non-process con- test-drive prospective hosts, rather than be shocked or disap-
trol protocols like 802.11 a, b, g, and n—to have multiple and pointed when the pairs get landed in the field. Host tests for
non-interoperable instrument communications as well. This HART 7 support are still a couple years or more behind sim-
contention wasn’t disputed by a panel of supplier and end- ilar tests for FF, but it’s plausible that similar certifications
user experts that included technology leaders with key roles at will someday make the choices and capabilities clear.
WINA, SP-100 committee and HART at ISA Expo last fall.
HART 7 is widely seen by end users as giving HART a John Rezabek is the author of the Control column “On the Bus.”

Reprinted with permission from Control Magazine, February 2009. On the Web at www.controlglobal.com.
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