Energy Harvesting with Ambient IoT—Progress in Connectivity Standardization

As Ambient Internet of Things (IoT) gains momentum, the industry is racing to standardize low-power wireless technologies that can run on energy harvested from the environment. Bluetooth^® Low Energy (LE) is currently the dominant connectivity protocol, but alternatives like IEEE 802.15.04, EnOcean, and even cellular Low-Power Wide Area (LPWA) are emerging to support ultra-low-power, battery-free use cases across commercial buildings, smart homes, and industrial environments.

Ambient IoT Connectivity Market Overview

The Ambient Internet of Things (IoT) market is accelerating, with manufacturers rapidly adopting battery-free, energy-harvesting devices across smart homes, buildings, and industrial environments. Bluetooth® Low Energy (LE) is currently the dominant connectivity protocol, accounting for 80% of Ambient IoT shipments in 2024—or 121 million devices. Though Bluetooth® is expected to connect 795 million devices by 2030, its market share will shrink to 71% as alternative protocols emerge.

New Short-Range Wireless (SRW) technologies better suited to ultra-low-power environments are gaining ground. Protocols like IEEE 802.15.4 variants (Zigbee, Thread, Matter, Ultra-Wideband (UWB)) and EnOcean will grow from 21 million devices in 2024 to 216 million in 2030, driven by applications such as smart labels, asset tracking, and industrial monitoring.

Wi-Fi and cellular options like Narrowband (NB)-IoT and LoRaWAN will see slower growth due to higher power demands. They target niche, mission-critical use cases that lack broader appeal from device manufacturers and end users. 

As addressable markets scale, industry groups are updating connectivity standards to better support energy harvesting across the Ambient IoT ecosystem.

Ambient IoT is best suited to low-complexity, power-sipping devices in controlled environments, giving the lower power protocols an advantage when it comes to minimizing power consumption.

Bluetooth SIG: Enhancing Low-Power Profiles for Energy Harvesting

Bluetooth® LE continues to set the pace for Ambient IoT, due to its low power consumption, flexible topology options, and the widespread availability of cost-effective chips. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is actively exploring features to further reduce power demands and enable compatibility with energy harvesting systems. This includes investigating the use of Radio Frequency (RF)-based sensing and the potential to harvest energy directly from Bluetooth® radio waves.

Recent hardware innovations reflect this ambition. For example, Silicon Labs introduced the xG22E System-on-Chip (SoC) family, tailored for energy harvesting applications, in collaboration with energy harvesting specialist e-peas. Such partnerships are critical as chip designers and standards organizations align to support low-complexity, self-powered Ambient IoT deployments.

The commoditization and global developer support of Bluetooth® give it a significant advantage in scaling energy harvesting-enabled Ambient IoT use cases across smart homes, commercial buildings, and supply chains.

3GPP: Extending Cellular IoT for Ambient IoT Use Cases

Although wide-area cellular connections are typically less power-efficient than SRW protocols, The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is pushing the boundaries of cellular support for energy harvesting Ambient IoT.
Current efforts within 3GPP are focused on Long Term Evolution (LTE) Cat-M and Narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technologies, which fall under the umbrella of Low-Power Wide Area (LPWA) standards. These are being evaluated for suitability in ambient-powered devices for use cases such as environmental sensing, smart city, agricultural monitoring, and livestock tracking.
The ongoing 3GPP Release 19 process includes feasibility studies to address key challenges, such as:

• Managing unpredictable ambient energy sources
• Simplifying network registration for low-power devices
• Optimizing link budgets for constrained hardware
• Establishing streamlined authentication protocols
• Allocating the prerequisite spectrum for connectivity

By addressing these issues, 3GPP aims to standardize radio protocols and device requirements that will enable large-scale deployment of energy-harvesting Ambient IoT devices over cellular networks.

IEEE: Optimizing 802.15.04 and Wi-Fi for Ultra-Low-Power Systems

The IEEE plays a pivotal role in enabling energy harvesting across two major connectivity standards: 802.15.04 (used in Zigbee, Thread, and Matter) and Wi-Fi.

• 802.15.04: IEEE’s development of Zigbee Green Power exemplifies how 802.15.04 is being adapted for energy harvesting environments. Originally designed to eliminate the need for batteries in large installations, Zigbee Green Power emphasizes ultra-low energy transmission and minimal overhead. Manufacturers such as Atmosic now offer SoCs that support 802.15.04 and include energy harvesting features. These developments aim to unlock deployment in hard-to-reach environments where battery replacement is impractical, such as agricultural fields, industrial settings, and commercial buildings. Most demand for 802.15.04 will stem from low-power use cases in asset tracking, smart home, and industrial monitoring. 
• Wi-Fi: Despite its reputation as a power-hungry protocol, IEEE is also exploring ways to make Wi-Fi more viable for certain Ambient IoT applications. Work is underway to adapt Wi-Fi tracking for use in low-power positional awareness, especially in use cases where energy harvesting can supplement battery or wired power sources. Opportunities for energy harvesting Wi-Fi are most likely in sectors like healthcare, wearables, and consumer electronics, where higher data rates are essential and device footprints can accommodate hybrid energy architectures.

EnOcean: Purpose-Built for Energy Harvesting

Unlike other connectivity standards that are being adapted for IoT energy harvesting, the EnOcean protocol was purpose-built for it. Finalized in 2012, the EnOcean standard was created when its developers determined that Zigbee was too power-intensive for battery-less operation.
EnOcean combines ultra-low-power connectivity protocols with custom chips and energy harvesting components. The standard is widely used in building automation and smart home devices. As of early 2020, over 1,500 EnOcean-based products were available for the smart building market.
Given that radio communication is typically the most power-hungry aspect of a connected device, EnOcean’s focused approach—integrating protocol, chip, and harvester development—gives it a unique position in enabling true zero-maintenance Ambient IoT deployments.

Get the full report
The shift toward energy-harvesting Ambient IoT is driving a reimagining of wireless connectivity standards. Download the full report, Energy Harvesting for the IoT: Connectivity Technologies and Critical Growth Factors, to explore how standardization bodies are shaping the future of Ambient IoT and what it means for chipset vendors, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and service providers.