Title: Toward Eco-friendly and Sustainable Technology in 3GPP Release-19 Ambient IoT

Date : 10 September 2024 (Day 2)
Venue : Remote Presentation (Link will be provided to registered participants via email)

ABSTRACT

Within the framework of Release 19, 3GPP TSG-RAN working groups are studying a new device, so-called Ambient Internet of Things (IoT) device, aiming at expanding the 5G New-Radio device ecosystem. In comparison with a conventional 3GPP cellular IoT device (for example, a Narrowband IoT device), Ambient IoT devices are not powered by traditional batteries, and have ultra-low complexity and power consumption. Such devices are characterized by their small form factor and capability to harvest energy sources from the environment such as radio electromagnetic waves, solar or light, kinetic or vibration, wind, thermal, among others. Additionally, these devices may be equipped with limited energy storage (e.g., supercapacitors) for storing electric energy harvested from the ambient energy sources. As a result, high maintenance costs and safety hazards due to manually changing or recharging batteries on individual IoT devices can be eliminated, leading to an eco-friendly and sustainable technology of the future, which reduces the carbon footprint of today’s supply chain. Such devices co-exist with the 5G-Avanced New-Radio technology. This presentation will give an overview of the Ambient IoT study conducted by 3GPP, which includes use cases, deployment scenarios, connectivity topologies, device categories, and radio-access network design targets.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Anthony Lo’s career spans two and a half decades, around three fifths of those have been spent in industry and the remaining in academia. He has been Senior Staff Engineer at Futurewei Technologies, Inc. (a research arm of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.) in Schaumburg, Illinois, the U.S., since 2022. He leads the Ambient IoT research in the Wireless Standards and Research Department of Futurewei. He is also a 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 delegate, driving the standardization activities of Ambient IoT in 3GPP Release 19. Prior to joining Futurewei, he was Senior Specialist at Alcatel-Lucent (subsequently, Nokia) from 2016 until 2022, where he performed cutting-edge research in 5G New Radio, and played a pivotal role in the standardization of 5G New Radio from 3GPP Release 15 to Release 18. His earlier stints include as a professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and as a research engineer at Ericsson EuroLab. He has filed about 20 patents related to telecommunications and contributed more than 100 technical documents to 3GPP TSG-RAN working groups for Ambient IoT, 5G New Radio and beyond standardization. He has authored and co-authored over 100 international conference and journal articles. He is a senior member of IEEE, and holds Ph.D., B.E and B.S. from La Trobe University, Australia.