the fundamental core problem in the last 10 years in WSN maybe an
energy-efficifient routing.
in the last 5 years, time synchoronization and localization draw more
attention. there's maybe more than 5 NSF projects in this area.
in the future, i think people will turn more attention on engineering
barriers. such as energy harvesting, ultra low power wireless
communication, in-network processing and focus more on its
applications
at first, there're some specific applications. and finally, WSN may be
part of the information infrastructure like 3G /PSTN networks.
there have been more than 8 books on WSN published in Chinese. you
can read them first.