There is a wide range of potential applications for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), each one with different features and requirements and defining a different mission for the sensor nodes to accomplish. In order to achieve the best network performance, it is important to adapt the network operation to these different missions. Such adaptation should be preferably performed by a middleware layer that translates application missions to networks configuration in a transparent way for the final users and client applications. In this context, we propose MARINE (MiddlewAre for Resource and mIssion oriented sensor NEtworks), a WSN middleware that tailors the WSN to requirements of each application mission while optimizing the overall resource consumption in sensor nodes. Copyright © 2012 ACM.