 Now, the ubiquitous sensor network services have to be provisioned to the end users through an architecture. So, the functional requirements from that architecture are going to be based on certain entities. These entities are referred to as objects, which are involved in providing or obtaining certain services. So, we will start with the understanding of objects. Now, whatever is around us, tangible or intangible, can be considered to be an object, similar to something like a class or an object in object-oriented programming. So, these objects can actually be connected through NGN because we are talking about the USN services in NGNs. These objects, once physical, are for instance, some devices, sensors, terminals like PDAs, laptops, even vehicles, cars, ships, trains. Then we have the logical objects. Logical objects are what we attribute as the identity which we wish to assign to the physical objects. It is mostly done through identification mechanisms. If you recall, we had the identification module IDM. And then, how we want these to be presented in the context of NGN virtually, like what name would we like to give to these objects and how these objects would be accessed and managed. So, broadly speaking, the objects are separated from the NGN through some intermediary known as a gateway. Now, this gateway is basically used for translating the proprietary or object-specific lingo into NGN-compliant traffic and messaging formats. So the objects actually have different capabilities and there's a whole domain known as web ontology. In web ontology, the objects are characterized by a variety of definitions and perspectives and parameters. So in simple terms, we can think about different types of objects. For instance, are these objects some resources or these objects are the content with certain resources? Are these objects fixed or mobile? Are these objects, if they're physical, are these operated from the mains, that is 220 volts, 50 or 60 hertz power supply or battery? Are these human-managed objects or human-controlled objects or these are? The objects which can be managed by machines, also known as the machine-to-machine communication, are these objects IP-enabled or not because IP-enabled actually simply means plugging them or interfacing them in the NGN architecture. So there are some interesting devices which are used in certain standardized networks like IPv6 over low-power, low-data-rate, wireless, personal-area networks, six-low-pan. There is a group in ITF known as the six-low-pan working group that is continuously working on standardizing these devices so that these objects, aka devices, are accessible to end-users for a variety of services. Then we have RFID sensors. All these essentially are the objects. Now the objects are associated with services in a variety of ways. For instance, certain objects need certain services. Certain objects provide certain services. Certain objects facilitate certain services. So broadly, the USN services need certain capabilities. For instance, connectivity is a requirement for these objects. Then networking capability across a variety of protocols and standards to have some kind of openness and interfacing like ANI application to network interface which allows these services to be usable or used by certain objects. Then we have the context awareness and the object-to-object interaction. So if we look at the overall functional architecture, we can broadly categorize it as the end-user functions or the network functions. Most of the responsibility of the network functionality is handled by NGN. It has a very well-defined, very fine mechanism for identification, handled through identity management functions. Then purely network management functions. Then we have the strata. The services are offered through the service stratum which manages and controls services. Then we have the transport stratum. Now the network-to-user interaction is through ANI and the end-user interacts with the network through UNI interface. The end-user functions are what we already know. End-user is interested in managing, using, defining, offering certain objects. So each object is characterized by certain functionality like information collection, storage, processing, communication, etc. And then we have the end-user with the front-end with its own services and transport mechanisms which talk to the NGN. So overall, this functional architecture meets the NGN vision of service provisioning when sensor network services are to be offered under the guise of USN.