RFID Journal

As ambient IoT scales, the difference between 1W and 2W power is increasingly showing up in how consistently data can be captured across real environments. Ambient IoT conversations tend to start and end at the sensor level— battery-free tags, energy harvesting, low-cost deployment. Those elements matter, but they’ve also pulled attention away from what actually determines whether a network works. In controlled environments, systems tend to look stable. Data flows. Reads are consistent.

Inventory visibility has improved sharply with RFID adoption, yet many industrial environments still face a persistent gap. Knowing where an asset sits is essential. Knowing whether that asset can do its job tomorrow is a different need. RFID systems handle identity and movement. Industrial inspection workflows account for the physical condition and the surrounding context. Most sites run these two capabilities in separate silos. One team tracks tags. Another team flies drones or walks the yard.

Halter is showing how solar-powered smart collars and LoRaWAN connectivity can replace physical fencing with real-time, remote cattle management across vast rural properties. The deployment highlights how low-power wide-area networks are helping scale smart agriculture by improving herd visibility, grazing efficiency and livestock welfare.

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has ignited the demand for data centers. Goldman Sachs predicts a doubling of the power demand to run the data centers in just two years.

The industry narrative around IoT-enabled supply chain visibility in 2026 is compelling: Cat 1bis connectivity delivering global reach across 4G networks, BLE pixels broadcasting encrypted condition data from every shelf and pallet, AI platforms converting raw sensor streams into real-time decisioning.

Beverage producers have modernized nearly everything, except the part that matters most. Supply chains got smarter. Packaging became more sophisticated. Distribution connected itself to real-time logistics networks. But inside the fermentation vessel, where the actual product is born, producers have largely been flying blind, piecing together what’s happening from periodic samples, lab results taken hours earlier, and manual observations that capture only a frozen moment in a wildly dynamic process.

The item is in the system. The promotion is running. The buyer clicks purchase. Then the fulfillment team discovers the item is misrouted, damaged, or simply not where the RFID scan said it was. The cancellation email goes out. The buyer does not come back. Every system logged it correctly, but the outcome still failed. This is the defining accountability problem in omnichannel retail right now.

Global supply chains have always operated under pressure, but the nature of that pressure has changed. What was once a system optimized for cost is now expected to deliver speed, resilience, transparency, and adaptability all at once. This change is playing out in real time as geopolitical instability, economic volatility, and compressed retail cycles expose the limits of traditional supply chain management approaches.

It has been a tech-forward start to the year from the world of digital signage. Industries including retail, restaurant, hospitality, and corporate (to name a few) are being challenged to deliver more engaging, tech-forward experiences for customers and workers. This happens alongside efforts to both optimize operations and grow business, presenting a challenging proposition. At the heart of these experiences is content, delivered and managed by pro AV and digital signage ecosystems.

In most plants and logistics setups, cold chain control looks more solid on paper than it really is in practice. You walk through a cold room, everything feels under control. Machines are running, pallets are stacked properly, and someone has signed the checklist. At that moment, it’s easy to assume the product is safe. But anyone who has worked long enough in food, pharma, or industrial storage knows this truth: problems rarely show up when you’re looking at the system.