Patent ID: 7783330

Claim:
A control system comprising: a plurality of field devices, each field device having a unique field device address; a host computer for sending control messages to and receiving control messages from the field devices, each control message to one of the field devices including the unique field device address of that field device, a command, byte count, data, a check byte and physical layer overhead; and a wireless network including: a gateway that interfaces the wireless network with the host computer, the gateway removing the physical layer overhead, adding message sequence information, recalculating the check byte, translating the field device address to a wireless address of the wireless node at which the field device corresponding to the field device address is located based upon a stored table that correlates field device addresses with wireless addresses and generating a wireless message containing that wireless address, the field device address, the command, the byte count, the data, the message sequence information, and the recalculated check byte; and a plurality of wireless nodes, each node having a unique wireless address and including a radio for transmitting and receiving wireless messages, and a wireless device router for converting a received wireless message to a control message and routing the control message to a field device based upon the field device address contained in the received wireless message.