The Ambient IoT Alliance, or AIoTA, is a global, cross-industry coalition working to promote and develop standards for batteryless IoT devices relying on energy harvesting for power.
Ambient Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a class of IoT devices powered by radio waves, light, motion, heat, or any other viable ambient energy source. It is an evolution of legacy IoT and RFID technologies that promises lower costs and high scalability through Bluetooth, 5G Advanced, and the IEEE 802.11bp ambient power communication (AMP) standard.
The alliance says its mission is to “promote and support the development of an open, harmonized, and aligned multi-standard ecosystem”. Ambient IoT-enabled devices can gather location, temperature, humidity, and/r other data, and communicate with the wireless infrastructure through a nearby mobile device, wireless access points, domestic appliances, or other standard gateways using a compatible standard. This reduces maintenance costs since batteries do not need to be replaced, and the AIoTA also states that the vast data generated will also enable advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
It was first introduced about one year ago, on February 19, 2025. Founding members include Atmosic, Infineon, Intel, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, VusionGroup, and Wiliot, all of which are invested in the advancement of ambient IoT solutions, best practices, interoperability, and other alliance efforts.
I missed the news at the time, but the AIoTA was brought to my attention when I noticed some upcoming Ambient IoT talks from Embedded World 2026, on March 10-12. Since the official website currently lacks details about the work of the new alliance, we can have a quick look at the talks (March 10 only) to see what’s been worked on:
- 11:00 – 11:30 – The Ambient IoT Alliance: Mission, Vision, and the Path to Pervasive Connectivity by Stephen Statler, Ambient IoT Alliance
The Ambient IoT Alliance is aligning industry on a new tier of connectivity that makes sensing and identification pervasive, ultra-low power, low solution cost, and largely infrastructure-free. By harvesting energy and riding today’s ubiquitous RF environments, Ambient IoT overcomes the traditional blockers to IoT scale—battery swaps, wiring, reader density, and deployment complexity—so everything, everywhere can be connected.
This talk defines Ambient IoT within the connectivity landscape and shows how it complements existing IoT while enabling ambient intelligence: continuous, privacy-aware insight that cuts waste, lifts transparency, improves sustainability, deters fraud, and supports massive, always-on monitoring.
We will outline the Alliance’s strategy to build an open, harmonized, multi-standard ecosystem, covering:
- Standards coordination across IEEE, 3GPP, Bluetooth SIG, and others
- Technical foundations for infrastructure-free operation
- Applications, E2E proofs of concept, certification, and market enablement to drive adoption
The session highlights distinctive attributes—battery-free or micro-power tags, minimal added infrastructure, seamless use of existing networks—that unlock applications once impractical at scale. Drawing on deep experience in standards and deployments, the presentation orients attendees to the Alliance’s mission and sets context for the technical sessions that follow.
- 11:30 – 12:00 – Ambient IoT in Action by Simon Ford, Blecon Ltd
In this session, Simon Ford, founder and CEO of Blecon, will demonstrate Ambient IoT in action, including asset tracking and monitoring using ambient IoT devices and networks. We will explore the technical building blocks that are enabling these systems, from the energy harvesting and intelligence in the devices to the network technologies and topologies being used to deliver data to cloud backends and AI.
Attendees will gain practical insights into designing Ambient IoT solutions that can be deployed now.
- 12:00 – 12:30 – Security and Privacy for Ambient IoT: Challenges and Options by Preeti Ohri Khemani, Infineon Technologies
As we consider the exciting prospects of Ambient IoT, we must carefully note and address the security and privacy concerns raised by the technology. More than a decade of experience has shown that consumers will not adopt IoT at scale until these concerns have been resolved. The nature of planned Ambient IoT deployment (massive scale and ubiquitous presence) actually increases the magnitude of these security and privacy concerns. Government regulations such as the European Union’s Radio Equipment Directive and Cyber Resilience Act make IoT security a requirement for IoT products to be sold in Europe.
However, the special characteristics of Ambient IoT present their own challenges that may render many traditional IoT security techniques unsuitable. For example, the limits on power storage capacity and the uncertain availability of power in Ambient IoT make it difficult to engage in conventional cryptographic exchange protocols.
This talk will lay out the primary and secondary security and privacy challenges specific to Ambient IoT, along with those that pertain to IoT more broadly. Existing solutions and possible novel solution approaches will be presented, showing how these concerns can be overcome.
The abstracts don’t provide that many technical details, but it appears they plan to have massive Ambient IoT sensor deployments over time to gather data for retail, smart cities, logistics, and other applications. The mention of “infrastructure-free” operation implies there would be few to no gateways, instead relying on connectivity from smartphones and other connected devices. One of the new standards is the IEEE 802.11bp amendment, which defines modifications to the 802.11 Medium Access Control layer (MAC) and Physical Layers (PHY) to enable the operation of an Ambient Power communication (AMP) station (STA) that is powered using energy harvesting. It can work in sub-Gigahertz and 2.4 GHz modes. 5G Advanced (5G-A) also defines Ambient IoT as a new device class in Release 19. Finally, Bluetooth LE is also used through BLE beacons, but it’s unclear whether modifications to the standard are required or planned for Ambient IoT.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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