Intelligent field devices: user expectations

Modern computerised systems for distributed control, maintenance and management of industrial plants communicate with each other and with the production process. This scenario includes Fieldbusses, intelligent actuators and transmitters, to make more efficient the operation of the plant. The utilisation of fieldbus was first thought to be the straightforward replacement of analogue transmission between transmitters and controllers. But field devices are growing in capability evolving towards solutions with several sets of functions to carry out automatically not only their primary activity but also diagnostics, calibration, configuration, data validation etc.; there will be both simple field devices and intelligent field devices. In other words there is an evolution towards a possible distribution in the field of some activities traditionally carried out completely by the centralised system (computers), such as diagnostics, data validation and treatment of multi-input/outputs of a small area of the field