Venture Development Corporation’s (VDC) recent report on global markets and user requirements for wireless and wireline network infrastructure products in industrial facilities finds extensive deployment of wireless Ethernet (Wi-Fi) networking, with a trend toward even greater usage.

Of the infrastructure products reported, shipments using proprietary protocols, principally in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz bands, accounted for the highest share of worldwide shipments in 2006, at about 47% of the total. However, the study indicates that the shipment growth rate for these products is forecast at below average, and the shipment share is expected to decline to about 44% in 2011.

According to VDC, several factors will account for the trend to higher growth in use of wireless standards. These include the established base and familiarity among both engineers and IT departments with IEEE 802.11 and other standards. Advantages of using standard networks include lower prices, interchangeable suppliers and established best practices (including security and interference protection, and ease of installation). Hence, last year, products incorporating wireless Ethernet IEEE 802.11 standards accounted for almost 44% of worldwide shipments, and are forecast to account for over 48% in 2011, said VDC. In this surging market, the highest shipment growth rate is expected for products using the IEEE 802.11 standards. Of the total market gain of $868.9 million expected in 2011 compared to the 2006 market, products using wireless Ethernet IEEE 802.11 standards are expected to account for $430.6 million, or almost 50% of the increase, noted VDC study.

Likewise, the market research firm projects above-average growth in shipments of mesh networking IEEE 802.15.4 based ZigBee products. These will continue to account for a larger share of shipments as low-power, low-data rate meshed sensor networks find wider acceptance. However, the VDC study cautions that despite the hype, mesh networking is not expected to account for a significant portion of the industrial wireless networking infrastructure market by 2011.