Condition monitoring applications continues to grow in importance, as equipment manufactures look to increase asset utilization with real-time monitoring of equipment, to extend equipment lifespans and increase throughput by utilizing predictive maintenance techniques to reduce maintenance costs and asset downtime. Condition monitoring is also deployed to improve manufacturing quality and increase safety in manufacturing plants. Given that unscheduled downtime can amount to nearly a quarter of total manufacturing costs, predictive maintenance has the potential to unlock significant savings and productivity.

Industry market reports focused on condition monitoring show growth projections for this market between 25% and 40% CAGR driven by the two growth areas. First is the increased deployment of smart sensors to monitor the health of the assets and second is the increased use of artificial intelligence & advanced analytics to transform asset health data into actionable insights to deploy predictive maintenance capabilities and create new service based, predictive maintenance business model opportunities. Growth in new condition monitoring deployments will be across a wide range of industries including water & wastewater treatment, manufacturing, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, metal & mining, energy and oil & gas installations.

Within these industries condition monitoring applications are expanding beyond the traditional rotating equipment applications (pumps, compressors and fans) to new applications in CNC machines, machine tools, encoders, conveyor belts, robotics and instruments. One key challenge that needs to be solved to enable the growth of condition monitoring applications, is the connectivity from the smart sensors to the higher-level management systems, that act based on the insights from the asset being monitored.

To-date condition monitoring applications have used wired or wireless connectivity solutions depending on the end application requirements. Wireless connectivity solutions have advantages in terms of ease of deployment but are often limited in terms of bandwidth and/or battery life. Wired connectivity solutions are sometimes limited in data bandwidth, long distance in a hash industrial environment is not always supported and often require a separate cable for power. Existing Industrial Ethernet solutions based on 100BASE-TX/10BASE-T provide high data bandwidth up to 100Mb, power over a CAT-5 or CAT-6/e cable with PoE but are limited to 100m distance and don’t support hazardous area use case as they are high power solutions.

Condition monitoring applications require support for potentially remote sensors, that require robust communication over a long distance where the sensor node is in a space and power constrained IP66/67 enclosure due to the harsh industrial environmentally it is deployed in. These constrained sensor node applications need a low power, high data bandwidth communications solution that delivers both power and data on a low cost, easy to install cable with a small cable connector to the sensor node.

New SPE (single pair Ethernet) physical layer standards completed in IEEE are offering new connectivity solutions for communicating asset health insights for condition monitoring applications. 10BASE-T1L is a new Ethernet physical layer standard (IEEE 802.3cg-2019) that was approved within IEEE on November 7, 2019. It will dramatically change the automation industry by significantly improving operational efficiency through seamless Ethernet connectivity to field-level assets. 10BASE-T1L solves the challenges that, to-date, have limited the use of Ethernet to the field assets. These challenges include power, bandwidth, cabling, distance, data islands, and intrinsically safe Zone 0 (hazardous areas) applications.

By solving these challenges for both brownfield upgrades and new greenfield installations, 10BASE-T1L will enable new asset health insights that were previously unavailable and seamlessly communicate them to the control layer and to the cloud/private server. These new insights will awaken new possibilities for data analysis, operational insights, and productivity improvements through a converged Ethernet network from the field assets to the cloud or private server.

Asset health insights on a converged IT/OT network.

10BASE-T1L removes the needs for complex, power hungry gateways required by legacy communications to connect to the control and management network and enables a converged Ethernet network across the information technology (IT) and operating technology (OT) networks. This converged network delivers a simplified installation, easy device replacement, faster network commissioning and configuration. This results in faster software updates with simplified root cause analysis and maintenance of field-level assets. 10BASE-T1L physical layer combined with MQTT (Messaging Transport Protocol) provides a messaging protocol for field assets with a low memory footprint for lower power smart sensors. MQTT provides direct connectivity of asset health insights to the cloud or a private server for advanced data analytics for predictive maintenance techniques.

To communicate with a 10BASE-T1L enabled field asset, a host processor with integrated medium access control (MAC), a passive media converter, or a switch with 10BASE-T1L ports is required. No additional software, no customized TCP/IP stack, and no special drivers are required (see Figure 3).

This results in clear advantages for 10BASE-T1L devices:

• 10BASE-T1L is a very low power physical layer technology that can enable very low power smart sensors deployments with a high data bandwidth connectivity solution.
• A smart sensor connected with 10BASE-T1L is accessible over the network and can be remotely updated anywhere, at any time. Sensors are becoming more complex and the probability of software updates increases. This is now possible within realistic periods of time via a fast Ethernet connection.
• Access to advanced Ethernet network diagnostic tools to simplify root cause analysis.
• Increased smart sensor installation flexibility via a single twisted pair cable up to 1km and beyond, with power and data on a single twisted pair cable. A are now available remotely, via a web server running on the field asset and can now be accessed anywhere, reducing the need for a maintenance technician “to walk the floor” to monitor an assets health, a significant cost saver.

Field asset, smart sensor connectivity with a 10BASE-T1L PHY.

ADIN1100 ADI’s 10BASE-T1L PHY enables lower power, Ethernet connectivity on a single twisted pair cable > 1,200m with only 39mW of power consumption. With 10BASE-T1L both power and data can be provided on a single twisted pair cable. A 10Mb data bandwidth communication link with significant power capability over the same cable provides field assets smart sensors, the power and connectivity bandwidth to enable new condition monitoring applications. With 10BASE-T1L connectivity, asset health insights are now more accessible, as the insights are now available across a converged IT/OT Ethernet network.

10BASE-T1L supports hazardous area use case applications (Intrinsically Safe Zone 0) for process automation deployments and is sometimes referred to as Ethernet-APL. 10BASE-T1L/Ethernet-APL will enable new lower power connectivity solutions, to connect asset heath monitoring smart sensors to the higher-level data management systems for AI & advanced analytics to transform asset health data into actionable insights to deploy new predictive maintenance services.

Analog Devices is delivering complete, system level solutions for condition monitoring applications that enable real-time monitoring of field assets. ADI’s commitment to enabling next-generation condition monitoring applications leverages decades of experience in sensing, signal processing, connectivity, mechanical packaging techniques and artificial intelligence. ADI OtoSense™, is an AI-driven platform that senses and interprets in real-time, any sound, vibration, pressure, current, or temperature for continuous, condition-based monitoring and on-demand diagnostics, enabling AI integration at all levels of our customer’s systems. It operates on the field asset at the edge, in real-time, both online and offline, for continuous condition monitoring of field assets. ADI OtoSense™ detects anomalies and learns from interaction with condition monitoring domain experts while creating a digital fingerprint to help identify faults in a machine so it can predict breakdowns before they cause costly downtime, damage, or catastrophic failure.

ADI’s deep domain knowledge across sensing, signal chain and system design considerations combined with our AI sensing and interpreting platform enables our customers to deploy new condition monitoring systems faster. Extract more value out of their condition monitoring solutions via access to higher quality data and insights. Improve their customers’ manufacturing processes, extend their equipment lifetime in the field and reduce unscheduled downtime while maintaining the highest levels of quality and safety. ADI’s condition monitoring system level solutions provide the technology and insights to create new, high value, predictive maintenance service offerings for deployed equipment.

Analog Devices, Condition Monitoring capabilities.

Maurice O’Brien, Strategic Marketing Manager