Limited Battery Life
Most IoT devices have small batteries. This is mainly because the devices are often incredibly small—and new generations of IoT technology are trending smaller and more efficient devices and components.
Larger batteries could restrict a device’s use cases or limit where and how the device can be installed.
For example, putting a larger battery on a predictive maintenance sensor could prevent you from installing the sensor where it would be most protected from extreme temperatures, debris, impact, and other conditions that could cause damage.
For devices that spend most of their lifecycle in the field without access to another power source, the battery is designed to last for years.
But it can only last all that time if the device’s regular operations drain minimal power. Transmitting or receiving data for extended periods drains too much battery life.
The solution
Newer networking technologies like NB-IoT and LTE-M have power-saving features like Power-Saving Mode (PSM) and Discontinuous Reception (DRX).
These features can help extend the battery life of IoT devices to 10 years or more, but many older technologies still in use today don’t have these capabilities, leaving businesses to choose between too little data throughput and too much power consumption.
Another way manufacturers can make more efficient use of their batteries is with specialized IoT routers and gateways.
These pieces of network infrastructure can serve as intermediaries between IoT devices and the applications and network entities they need to communicate with.
The gateway or router can support the more complicated protocols and security processes like encryption and authentication, keeping devices secure while minimizing their power consumption.
