Single minded

Engineers are planning a single system to handle all electronic communications at complex sites such as airports, factories, hospitals and universities.

The idea is to cut infrastructure costs by uniting dozens of different wired and wireless networks, and the solution will also support mass monitoring of RFID tags.

The new systems will be intelligent, self-organising, adaptive and able to handle so much data that they will track everything that moves. Data for disparate applications such as speech, CCTV, terminals, tags, vehicles and displays will be hosted on the same network.

'It can be very expensive to install, maintain and operate all the different networks that are used at the moment,' said Prof Jon Crowcroft of Cambridge University, which is leading the project. 'You've got a whole bunch, including 2 and 3G cellular networks and wi-fi.

'The problems caused by the variety of systems can also be compounded by the extent of the coverage. For somewhere like an airport you must have wireless access throughout the buildings, into the public areas and out on to the runways,' he said.