The Internet of Things (IoT) has long promised trillions of connected devices, but its growth has been stalled by cost, battery limitations, and complex infrastructure. Ambient IoT offers a breakthrough: ultra-low-power and even battery-free devices communicating using harvested energy and existing radios like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular. This is not ambient sensing — it’s about removing power and scalability barriers from IoT.
This paper summarizes how 3GPP, IEEE, and Bluetooth SIG are standardizing Ambient IoT.
3GPP’s Release 19 introduces µW-level passive devices using backscatter and simplified MAC-only stacks with ambient-powered topologies. Release 20 expands to active devices, new topologies, and a dedicated Ambient IoT Function in the 5G core.
IEEE 802.11’s TGbp (AMP) defines new PHY and MAC layers for harvested-energy operation over Wi-Fi. AMP STAs include active and backscatter types with fire-and-forget uplink, coexistence with legacy Wi-Fi, and energy-coordinated scheduling.
Bluetooth SIG, already in commercial use, leverages BLE’s broadcast model and simplified radio to enable low-cost, energy-harvested tags with Core 5.x and ESL features.
To realize Ambient IoT’s full potential, these efforts must converge into coherent, system-level solutions. This is where the Ambient IoT Alliance (AIoTA) plays a critical role—promoting harmonized architectures, cross-technology compatibility, and scalable deployment models across a growing ecosystem.