The next generation of networks will move beyond disconnected device-specific networks and systems and toward a distributed infrastructure, with intelligent functions residing across the entire network, from its edge to its core.

Wildfires, river basins, tsunami alerts, and environmental risk management are just some of the projects using OGC's interoperability framework for Web-based access and control of sensors and sensor data.

Integrating networks of sensors has been a goal for years, from the creation of device profiles and industrial networking standards through to the adoption of ad hoc wireless sensor and control networks. Web services promise to ease the integration of these disparate and distributed elements.

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.

Typically, a TinyOS application is a concise program built upon a set of system services and reflecting the processing logic of its particular domain.

New software must also make it possible to quickly acquire data and store it locally, passing back only parametric data.

Some people say WiFi and ZigBee can work side by side; others say they cannot.

Few things are as inspiring to the practice of engineering as new technologies that break down barriers and enable new possibilities. Take, for instance, the new Nexense platform Rarely does sensing and measurement allow the flexibility to accomplish multiple sensing jobs with a single technology. Yet Nexense does, and thus has inspired great excitement here at Sensors. (The real excitement is yet to come when the technology gets into the hands of engineers in all disciplines.)

Besides being the world's largest chip maker, Intel Corp. (www.intel.com) is also known to be an active researcher of wireless sensor technologies and applications. Why? Because the company sees a future filled with sensors that will require processing power to achieve their potential. And processing power is what Intel is all about.