EDACafe Industry Predictions for 2024 – Atmosic

By Nick Dutton, senior director for product marketing, Atmosic

Nick Dutton

Consumers and businesses alike are prioritizing sustainability in their purchase decisions. We’re all becoming more conscious of the environmental impact of the products we use and discard. Below is a look at some segments where we’re seeing this demand for sustainability in full force.

In 2024, we’ll see consumers double down on sustainable asset trackers. Why? Simply put, people want a more convenient way to keep track of their items, whether it be luggage, keys, or even pets. As consumers are deciding what type of tracker to purchase, battery life is a critical consideration. Replacing batteries costs time and money. Plus, battery waste is bad for the environment, making eco-friendly asset trackers a must-have. One great example is the Samsung SmartTag2, which delivers 700 days of battery life thanks to Atmosic’s ATM3325 Bluetooth 5.3 SoC.

Furthermore, many industries—including healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing—rely heavily on asset tracking applications. Asset trackers are a great way for businesses to manage the equipment in their facilities and keep tabs on where shipments are going. Since these companies have anywhere from hundreds to thousands or even millions of assets to manage, it’s critical that businesses choose sustainable asset trackers to minimize their maintenance time, costs, and carbon footprint.

We’re seeing a growing demand for other types of sustainable devices as well. Retail stores are adopting eco-friendly electronic shelf labels (ESLs) to display real-time pricing information. Enterprises are adopting sensors and beacons with extended battery life that can be integrated into all sorts of IoT applications. Plus, consumers are looking for eco-friendly keyboards and mice. Targus’ ErgoFlip EcoSmart Mouse, which was selected as a CES 2024 Innovation Award Honoree, stands out in this category; it reduces power consumption by using an Atmosic ATM2 Bluetooth SoC that is four times more energy efficient than other BLE chipsets.

While there are different ways that products can be designed sustainably to reduce battery waste, energy harvesting is one of the most promising. Energy harvesting allows devices to capture, use, and store energy from RF, heat, light, and motion sources. This capability can significantly extend battery life so that batteries last the entire lifetime of the device. Plus, some devices can harvest enough energy to operate without any batteries.

Over the next year we’ll also see more connected devices that support the Matter protocol. Matter enables smart home and mobile platforms to seamlessly communicate with each other regardless of the device manufacturer. New silicon solutions such as Atmosic’s ultra-low power ATM34 support Matter, along with Thread and Bluetooth 5.4, so product manufacturers can meet the industry’s latest connectivity requirements. ATM34 also supports energy harvesting to eliminate the need for battery replacement in connected devices and enable some devices to operate battery-free, which will drive a new wave of sustainable devices.

Additionally, we’ll see more connected devices support Bluetooth Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) and Angle-of-Departure (AoD) direction finding. Bluetooth AoA is a popular solution for consumer IoT applications since it’s very accurate and power efficient. Bluetooth AoD is a good choice for commercial and point-of-interest wayfinding, like helping fans at a stadium navigate to their favorite food stands.

Finally, we expect products with channel sounding, previously referred to as HADM, to emerge in Q3 2024. Channel sounding produces highly accurate distance estimations called phase-based ranging (PBR) by analyzing radio signals to determine how far away two devices are. Compared to ultra-wide band, channel sounding has much lower power consumption which offers improved battery life. It’s also important to consider that AoA and AoD require multiple antennas, which can impact the distance accuracy of multipath environments. Channel sounding excels by bringing the distance accuracy between two BLE devices to 10 cm. Channel sounding will benefit all sorts of IoT applications, including asset tracking.

With the industry’s renewed focused on sustainability, we’re looking forward to seeing the next generation of eco-friendly IoT innovation thrive this year.

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About Author:

Nick Dutton is senior director for product marketing at Atmosic, one of the IoT industry’s leading providers of sustainable wireless technologies, where he oversees aspects of the company’s product management strategy and their public relations activities. Nick has held senior leadership roles at Silicon Valley technology companies including Zentri and Integration Associates where he led the successful acquisition by Silicon Labs. He has also held roles at Roving Networks, which was acquired by Microchip Technology in 2012.

Nick’s vision at Atmosic is to drive a new wave of sustainable innovation in the IoT sector. He works closely with his team, Atmosic’s customers, and their partners to highlight the environmental and business benefits of reducing a device’s dependency on batteries, and therefore ultimately reducing harmful battery waste caused by connected products.

Category: Predictions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2024 at 4:29 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.