Towards Reliability and Safety Improvement of Measurement and Control Processes on Ships: Implementation of Wireless Hart Protocol

Measurement and control systems in maritime engineering applications are quite similar to those in shore based engineering applications except for some unique features which differentiate between each of them. These features are either related to the specific nature and purpose of the maritime application (Various types of commercial ships, oil/gas rigs and others) or linked to the harsh environmental conditions such as salinity, corrosion and vibration which usually exist in higher levels than shore based applications. Accordingly and due to such a specific nature of maritime engineering applications, more requirements should be considered to ensure reliability and stability for measurement and control process avoiding any negative effects that might be associated with such a unique engineering environment. As was discussed in (Abotaleb, 2021), smart transmitters based on hybrid analogue-digital (HART) and digital (Foundation Fieldbus and Profibus PA) communication protocols with additional diagnostic information, they might be a possible wired alternative for analogue transmitters (mostly based on 4-20 mA analogue standard). Similarly, wireless HART protocol can be an alternative for 4-20 mA analogue transmitters. This article will discuss the possibility of replacing classical 4-20 mA analogue transmitters with wireless HART smart transmitters on commercial ships as an example for maritime engineering application. The first section of the discussion will include a theoretical background for the basic principles of wireless HART protocol among other wireless technologies used in industrial automation. The second section of the article will discuss the possibility of utilising wireless HART protocol in the most common measurement and control systems on any commercial ship in order to discover the degree to which wireless HART can be fully or partially integrated with maritime engineering applications. Afterwards, better realization for such a concept will be rendered by an analytical planning case study conducted for tank level measurement system on different types of commercial ships. Based on both the theoretical and the analytical sections, the experimental section will manifest the importance of some of the necessary key elements to implement a reliable wireless HART network. These key elements are RSSI levels, supply voltage stability and the capability of wireless HART adapters to integrate between wired HART protocol and wireless HART network.