Increased adoption of mesh networking and its self-healing capabilities could help to propel wireless networking to strong growth through 2015, according to recent research from VDC Research (www.vdcresearch.com). Market growth has been strengthened by technology enhancements that help to overcome concerns over reliability, latency and security, analysts say.
Growth of wireless networking in industrial facilities is driven by a variety of factors, however, including improved efficiency, cost reductions, increased productivity, and the ability to install wireless where wired solutions are impractical or impossible. Wireless networking reduces the majority of the cabling required, along with associated costs; it also allows easier add-ons, changes and removal of functions.
Despite the benefits of wireless networking, VDC Research does not expect the real emergence of the technology throughout the control hierarchy for most applications within the next five years, particularly for critical applications.
VDC forecasts the market for wireless networking products (access points, antennas, gateways, modems, repeaters, routers, switches, transceivers and standalone network management software) to grow from less than $400 million in 2010 to close to $1.3 billion in 2015.
Although data acquisition will remain the primary application served by wireless networking solutions, demand is growing most markedly for process, motion and logic control applications (see figure).
