Ambient IoT leaders Linxens and Dracula are to create battery-free smart labels to tackle the sector’s grim sustainable IoT record and failed massive IoT promise.
In sum – what to know:
Battery-free – Linxens and Dracula, prominent in the niche smart labels and ambient IoT sectors, have joined forces to develop new energy-harvesting solutions.
Desperate demand – the market for ambient IoT solutions will top a billion units by 2030; at present 78 million IoT units are being chucked out every day.
Ecosystem crossover – the IoT market appears to be uniting around both sustainability imperatives and business opportunities; Linxens and Dracula are well-placed.
A statement of intent rather than notice of proper achievement, but a hopeful collaboration, nonetheless, and a story RCR has been following about sustainable IoT, which crosses into a parallel story about ‘massive IoT’: French electronics manufacturer Linxens is working with energy harvesting startup Dracula Technologies to develop next-generation autonomous IoT solutions for traceability and smart labelling applications.
But, let’s back up – because there are lots of intertwined companies, partnerships, and interests in this market, suddenly, and it is worth explaining the background. Ultimately, the only stat worth really knowing – which tends to be quoted when the IoT market’s green credentials are called into question – is two years old, now, and says that 78 million batteries from battery-powered IoT devices will get dumped every day. By 2025.
Which is here, already – way faster than any fix, of course. But the industry appears, perhaps, to be getting its IoT-bits together. ABI Research said in April that shipments of ambient IoT devices, harvesting energy from the environment, will reach 1.1 billion units in 2030. The firm has a research study about it, which predicts that around 57 percent of ambient IoT devices in the period (576 million) will utilize photovoltaic (PV) cells to harvest light energy.
This is Dracula’s game. The France-based firm, which RCR has been writing about for a couple of years already, has developed an organic photovoltaic (OPV) solution, capable of harvesting energy even in low or intermittent indoor light (down to 100 lux). Other ambient sources for future IoT modules will include radio frequency (RF) signals (enabled in 36 percent of future ambient IoT shipments, says ABI), and both piezoelectric and thermoelectric energy.
In the case of the latter two, new chip-level mechanics will harvest power from stresses / vibrations and from heat – in four and three percent of ambient IoT units, respectively. For its part, Dracula is interesting because it claims to have solved the challenge of micro-energy storage, too: its LAYERVault system works with its original LAYER OPV chip tech (presented for marketing as a bat-shaped PV printout) to retain PV power, drawn even in murky lighting.
Dracula has a prototype tracker, geared for LoRaWAN-based IoT systems, that runs on its LAYER OPV cell – which can be printed in any size, depending on the power output, onto an 0.3mm adhesive sticker on a regular inkjet printer using special OPV ink. The firm also has a new production facility, with capacity to produce “150 million square centimetres” of OPV units per year. It has just announced a 15-percent jump in power efficiency in LAYER modules.
On the ecosystem front, ABI Research highlights the work of various firms to develop new power generator designs, including (in order): Wiliot, Exeger, Energous, Epishine, Powercast, EnOcean, and Ossia. It also notes work by e-peas and Nexperia on integrated circuits for power management (PMICs) to develop chips that can store ambient energy in efficient ways. They are variously “unlocking new applications across the IoT landscape”, it says.
For its part, Dracula has a deal with country-mate STMicroelectronics (STMicro), which is using its LAYER solution in its STM32U0 microcontrollers (MCUs). It is also working with US outfit CoolR Group, which is integrating LAYER modules into its VistaZ cameras, which combine traditional and ambient battery tech. The CoolR solution is for inventory management in retail – promising a cure-all for out-of-stock headaches, as well as cost and power optimisation.
There is real momentum in the market, it seems. In February, the likes of Infineon, Intel, PepsiCo, and Qualcomm joined together to form the Ambient IoT Alliance (AIoTA) to develop and scale energy-harvesting in battery-less IoT sensor devices. The group is focused on ambient IoT in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 5G devices, specifically. The other founders are Atmosic, VusionGroup, and Wiliot.
There is work to include ambient IoT as a 3GPP work item in development of releases 19 and 20 of the 5G standard(5G Advanced). The IEEE (Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth SIG have their own work items, alongside. Similar work is being done by the LoRaWAN and Sigfox communities, as above and below. The alliance wants an “aligned multi-standard ecosystem”, and other producers of IoT tags, devices, middleware, apps, and cloud services to join.
Meanwhile, Linxens, an STMicro channel partner as well, is all over this story, it seems – and mixing it with that other modish industry tale about disposable IoT ‘smart labels’. Which has been trialled and talked-about for five years, already – at least since pharmaceutical and life sciences firm Bayer started testing a printable NB-IoT-based tracking label, provisionally priced at a couple of euros, with Vodafone, Arm, Altair Semiconductor, and Murata in 2020.
And very clearly, if the smart labels concept is to be properly commercial, where millions upon millions of disposable IoT tracking tags go into circulation, then it needs to solve this environmental crisis. Linxens has a brand new multi-RAT (radio-access tech) Sigfox/Wirepas/satellite smart label, which it showed at CES at the start of the year. While not printable, it uses energy harvesting, and is constructed from bio-sourced plastics and recyclable materials.
Which – if really true, and if it is quickly and commercially available – is a proper break-through. Linxens has worked with Unabiz, which owns the Sigfox technology, and also chip maker NXP Semiconductor on the proposition. And their cooperation has expanded into a formalised alliance, as well – a so-called ‘Sub0G’ ecosystem collective, organised by Unabiz, to develop smart IoT labels for the low-end of the IoT tracking market.
UK printed battery maker Zinergy is also involved. The Sub0G programme is described as a “subcategory of the Sigfox 0G protocol”. (‘Sigfox 0G’ is the branding the Singapore-based firm has continued with since it acquired the ‘ultra-narrowband’ Sigfox technology in 2022.) Its focus, in the first instance, is to develop dirt-cheap (“cost-efficient, entry-level”) IoT trackers to attach to “returnable and short-lived assets” – rather than just about green IoT-things.
But the new deal between Linxens and Dracula moves the needle on this second sustainability challenge. Linxens is engaged in the design and production of electronic inlays and flexible components, which are key elements in (non-LPWAN) RFID tags, or smart labels by any other name. Its goal with Dracula is to to create “fully battery-free, reusable, and energy-autonomous smart labels”, it says.
A statement said: “Together, the two companies are addressing one of the key limitations of today’s connected labels: reliance on batteries, which reduces lifespan and increases environmental impact. This collaboration represents a technological leap forward, enabling long-lasting, cost-effective, and sustainable traceability solutions for logistics and other industries where durability and energy independence are essential.”
Quentin Pretet, vice president of IoT solutions at Linxens, remarked: “Innovation only makes sense if it goes hand in hand with responsibility. That’s why we consider environmental impact at every stage – from design to end-of-life. By integrating Dracula’s energy-harvesting technology into our devices, we reinforce our unique ability to deliver fully autonomous solutions that reduce environmental footprint without compromising performance.”
Jérôme Vernet, vice president of sales of Dracula, said: “Our strategic collaboration with Linxens is a natural fit. The complementarity of our technologies and shared vision for a more responsible IoT industry make this collaboration particularly meaningful. By combining Linxens’ design and manufacturing expertise with our OPV energy harvesting capabilities, we are enabling a new generation of sustainable, autonomous, and reusable connected devices.”
