Organizations including Qualcomm and Wiliot have announced the formation of the Ambient IoT Alliance, a multi-standard ecosystem of ambient IoT manufacturers, suppliers, integrators, operators, users, and customers.
Ambient IoT is an ecosystem for devices that draw energy from ambient radio waves, light, motion, heat, or any other widely available, pervasive source. Bluetooth, 5G Advanced, and 802.11bp could help support this class of devices, which offers high scalability and, potentially, lower costs than non-ambient versions, the alliance said. The term ambient IoT could apply to a wide variety of “battery-less things,” such as sensors for location, temperature, and humidity.
In the press release, the Ambient IoT Alliance said their ecosystem is not meant to replace any other standardization activities; instead, the group will promote ambient IoT and contribute documentation, support, and use cases to standardization efforts where appropriate.
Who are the founding members of the Ambient IoT Alliance?
Founding members of the Ambient IoT Alliance include:
- Atmosic.
- Infineon Technologies AG.
- Intel.
- PepsiCo.
- Qualcomm.
- VusionGroup.
- Wiliot.
The group’s founders hope businesses, telcos, technology vendors, and standards bodies will join to speed up the formal, global standardization of ambient IoT already in progress among the IEEE (Wi-Fi), Bluetooth SIG, and 3GPP (5G Advanced).
What will the Ambient IoT Alliance enable?
The Alliance’s vision is to connect the wireless radios in mobile devices and appliances to more IoT-networked devices. The Ambient IoT Alliance sees this method being used in “supply chains, retail channels, and healthcare delivery services.”
The method is also a chance to gather the large sets of data artificial intelligence can sort through. Ambient IoT could realize the ROI potential of AI and revolutionize supply chains or customer experiences, the group proposed.
Ambient IoT potentially offers options for energy reduction
As batteryless devices, ambient IoT components offer a way to reduce energy use and, at best, minimize maintenance time.
“Ambient IoT is well aligned with Infineon’s strategic focus on IoT and Energy leadership and our motto of driving digitalization and decarbonization,” said Dr. Kamesh Medapalli, senior vice president, Connected Secure Systems, Infineon Technologies.
Specifically, proponents of ambient IoT say it can “rearchitect” the way wireless tracking devices use energy.
“Ambient IoT is the key to sustainable IoT adoption,” said Atmosic CEO David Su. “It allows us to rearchitect wireless tracking solutions to either use very little power or harvested energy, so everything can remain connected continuously and companies can operate at maximum efficiency.”
