IEC 61158 survives as technical specification

InTech, Apr 1999

Geneva, Switzerland-When we last left you, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61158, the international fieldbus standard, had been rejected by the standards committee despite approval by a vast majority of participating members.

Richard Caro, convenor of the IEC working group that has labored on the digital standard for over a decade, was charged with validating the negative votes' technical merit by the standards committee's secretary, Tony Capel. Caro and his committee experts examined and analyzed the supporting comments submitted with six of the 11 negative votes received.

He reported that the comments of Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Luxembourg, and Denmark were general, not technical, opinions, or merely untrue, indicating a failure to understand the technology and, thus, not valid. He requested that Capel strike their votes, which would allow the document to pass under IEC voting rules.

This move has triggered a curious chain of events that, according to a recently issued IEC time line, involves two mailed questionnaires that solicit and resolicit participating national committees' opinions on the ballot disqualification. Disqualification has been supported by a majority of participating members.

Next, the IEC Committee of Action (CA) will decide whether or not to take into account the negative votes. A decision by the CA to overturn the ballot would require a two-thirds majority.

The time line ends on 15 June 1999. Caro feels that the battle will end this year and that IEC 61158 will win out as the international fieldbus standard.

Meanwhile, the IEC is about to publish four technical specifications covering fieldbus: the data-link layer (parts 3 and 4) and the application layer (parts 5 and 6), which have already been rejected and are encompassed in the above discussion.

The IEC explains the endeavor this way: "In the continuing effort to respond to market demands, the IEC has streamlined part of its product line, creating a technical specifications process. Technical specifications are closer in detail and completeness to consensus international standards than technical reports. They will appear after votes where, in some cases, the document may not have succeeded in becoming a full consensus standard. In these cases, rather than simply abandoning the work and effort put in by experts who prepare IEC standards, a publication of value to the electrotechnical community would still appear."