Simple sensor network middleware and FADs

As we progress into this decade, the number of devices which are able to monitor their environment and transmit that information through Sensor Networks will increase exponentially and will become an ever more important driver of the ICT area and the Internet of things paradigm. At the end of last year more than half a billion nodes had already been shipped for sensor network applications, that number is expected to triple before the end of the decade. Convergence and interconnection with unexpected devices in the evolving "Internet of Things" paradigm is creating an interconnected global network infrastructure, linking physical and virtual objects. Combined with the exponentially growing exploitation of captured data for new applications. Before their wide exploitation however, Sensor Networks have to solve some significant problems, including simple installation, simple adaptation, simple integration, simple maintenance and simple utilisation. This paper will describe the domain and introduce the research that is being done to deliver an intelligent, self-organizing embedded middleware platform, with particular emphasis on the integration of manufacturing and logistics. Here we address the issue of supporting the self-organization and cooperation of wireless sensors and smart (RFID) tags for federated, open and trusted deployment environments in the manufacturing, logistics and domestic application domains. We describe an innovative approach to modelling requirements and use cases introducing a Actor called First Acting Device (FAD) to the Rational Unified process which has greatly facilitated modelling and deployment of these types of networks.