Repurposing existing cabling in safety-critical industry

Last Updated 1 week ago by Kenya Engineer

Remote monitoring specialist Omniflex has released a new sector overview detailing its advanced CONET technology. The asset addresses the key benefits of CONET and its applicability for safety-critical industries such as nuclear, petrochemical and oil & gas. Offering an alternative to costly cable installations, CONET works across existing cabling thus saving costs, minimising waste production and disruption to the site.

The overview explores how the system overcomes challenges associated with installing traditional new wired networks. Helping businesses achieve sustainable development goals, CONET aids in decreasing waste production by reusing existing cables and minimising workers safety risks by avoiding high risk construction activities, limiting operational disruption. The overview also highlights the flexibility of CONET and how it offers a very cost-effective front end data acquisition system. 

“By repurposing existing cabling, CONET offers businesses a cost-effective and minimal disruption option, rather than installing new network cables, which halt operations and pose safety risks,” explains Gary Bradshaw, director at Omniflex. “CONET provides a safe, more practical and cost-effective option to traditional methods.” 

Originally developed and launched 1981, CONET is one of the world’s first industrial peer-to-peer real time networks. This type of network was initially inspired by the mining and nuclear industries where wireless networking is challenging, and strict construction rules apply. CONET bypasses these issues with the ability to work regardless of existing cabling setup. Bringing field data back into the control room, CONET can be used to link up any combination of supported hardware and software for data acquisition.

Based upon the ISO OSI 7-layer model, which secures a strong networking foundation, CONET also includes a robust token-passing protocol enabling up to 127 nodes on a single 10km network to be added or removed without impacting on the overall network throughput. Combined with a 16-bit Cyclic Redundancy Checksum (CRC), CONET can securely transmit data over 10km of existing cabling with a high degree of integrity, even in noisy electrical environments.