International standardization of field device integration technologies

Intelligent field devices were introduced in 1980´s with adoption of microprocessor. They had communication capability to configure and adjust device settings from a host device. For each vendor communication protocol was vendor specific and its host device was not compatible to use for other vendor´s field devices. Before intelligent devices came in the market, there was no need of digital communication and process data were transmitted purely in standard analog signals. Later in 1990´s HART protocol was widely used by many vendors and HART protocol was transferred to foundation consortia, where HART technology and its application implementation technology of EDDL have been maintained. Standardization of communication protocols and application implementation technology became very important for interoperability in the multi-vendor systems. This paper focuses on application implementation technology for device integration to host systems. EDDL technology was introduced in early stage of intelligent devices came into the market. EDDL has protocol specific profiles and its standard was defined by respective protocol foundation. FDT specification was introduced in early 2000´s and it is protocol neural. FDT supports various protocols by adding protocol profile annex as FDT specification extension for each protocol. Some vendor private protocol can be also integrated into FDT based host system. So far these integration standards have been consortia standards. FDT specification was brought to IEC for its international standardization. 3 protocol foundations organized EDDL Cooperation Team to enhance EDDL functionality commonly used for 3 protocols and enhanced EDDL was also brought to IEC. FDT and EDDL were proposed to ISA as ISA103 and ISA104 respectively either. FDI project started in 2007 as a single integration solution to combine both strengths of FDT and EDDL. FDI specification was developed under FDI project in parallel to IEC standardization. International standardization of field device integration technology is now very important for foundations, vendors and suppliers to convince end users that the technologies are widely applicable without geographical restrictions.