The ambient internet of things (IoT), according to IoT pioneer Wiliot, will offer an improved version of its Wiliot Cloud and IoT Pixels solutions. Wiliot claims that the IoT will be the biggest disruption to the mobile market since the smartphone and that it will grow from over 100 million devices in 2023 to billions by 2026.
The platform, which will make its debut in the mobile market at MWC Las Vegas in 2023, can now monitor and analyze the humidity levels of individual items and product cases in real time, throughout the supply chain.
With the launch, Wiliot engineers added a small membrane that senses air humidity to IoT Pixels. Different humidity levels cause IoT Pixels to collect data, which is wirelessly transmitted to the Wiliot Cloud where it is paired with temperature and location information to produce insights and analysis that can improve supply chain operations.
According to Wiliot CTO Alon Yehezkely, “over 100 million ambient IoT devices came online in 2023, and the market is predicted to grow to billions of devices by 2026.” No market is better placed to profit from this than mobile and telecoms. “This breakneck adoption and exponential scale are indicative of only the types of technologies that disrupt industries and change the world.”
Wiliot claimed it was possible for businesses to better ensure the safety, integrity, freshness, and sustainability of moisture-sensitive products, end-to-end and at what it calls a “unprecedented” scale, by adding humidity sensing to its core Visibility Platform – on top of its existing temperature and location sensing and carbon emissions measurement. It has not previously been feasible to scale up item- and case-level sensing for consumable products via carrier networks.
By integrating Wiliot’s self-powered IoT Pixels with Wiliot Cloud-based analytics, the business said its Visibility Platform creates “unparalleled” visibility into supply chains, distribution, and retail operations, among other capabilities. This platform is the first example of ambient IoT at scale.
Wiliot participates in the 5G and 6G working groups and is a member of the 3GPP. Wiliot asserted that by drawing on its expertise in developing IoT technology, it has helped define the needs for ambient IoT in new applications with industry heavyweights.
In addition, it claimed that its inclusion in 5G Advanced and 6G opened the door for wireless carriers and other parties to offer interoperable services that would link billions of wireless devices to trillions of ambient IoT-enabled goods, packages, locations, food items, plants, livestock, clothes, pharmaceuticals, and more.
The business claims that some of the biggest businesses in the world have adopted its platform and installed a significant number of IoT pixels throughout their supply chains for real-time visibility into everything from distribution to inventory control to sales.
IoT Pixels from Wiliot attach to any item or package and communicate with the internet via telecom networking equipment. They include compute power, secure communications, and sensor technologies, all of which, according to the company, are inexpensive per device but are necessary to build the ambient IoT. Tracking individual vaccination vial temperatures and fill levels as well as producing crates’ temperatures as they travel to retailers are two examples of recent use cases.
“The ambient IoT scales the internet of things from billions to trillions of connected products to help the world’s largest companies – and their mobile and telecommunications providers – solve their most pressing challenges,” said Yehezkely. “MWC Las Vegas represents an important opportunity for Wiliot and the ambient IoT ecosystem to help prepare the mobile market for this disruption and communicate strategies for effective, scalable, and profitable adoption.”