It's clear that developers see RFID-and-sensor networks as a key growth area. A sampling of recent developments in tags (sidebar) and infrastructure prove it.

Cell phone providers promote location-based services (LBS) as a way to send custom messages to subscribers based on their location—as reported by GPS or radiolocation and triangulation. Now LBSs are beginning to incorporate sensors.

Invensys points out that industrial operations typically introduce wireless networking by experimenting with a point solution for one application, then another point solution?often based on a different protocol?to solve another problem, and so on. The result: a messy, non-interoperable system unwittingly created, often with the blessing of the IT department.