Light-Powered Bluetooth Tags Offer Sustainable Traceability
In efforts to offer sustainable traceability to logistics and other applications, Paragon ID and Dracula Technologies have accelerated the deployment of the XgenTag-L, the first battery-free, light-powered Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) smart tag. Moving from pilot to large-scale industrial deployment, it will be part of the LAYER organic photovoltaic module family.
The devices provide sustainable, maintenance-free IoT solutions that eliminate batteries, mitigate environmental impact, and enable high-volume scalability. Ultimately, they help to reduce production costs, enable high-volume scale-up, and support more granular traceability in demanding supply chains.
Dracula Technologies’ LAYER ambient-light energy-harvesting modules deliver the energy autonomy required for truly maintenance-free connected devices, and the XgenTag-L adds Paragon ID’s expertise in connected traceability and system integration. In bright conditions, the tag can transmit signals every second, enabling real-time tracking without a battery.
The first fully energy-autonomous BLE tag available on the market, it's capable of continuous data transmission and geolocation without any batteries, maintenance, or dedicated infrastructure. In many environments, it can operate seamlessly with customers’ smartphones via an application provided by Paragon ID for plug-and-play operation.
The tags are designed for 10+ years of maintenance-free operation, reducing the total cost of ownership by up to 35%, with ROI achieved in as little as six months. Paragon ID and Dracula Technologies will next focus on industrial optimization, miniaturization, and integration into multiple tag and label formats to serve a variety of use cases, from supply chain and logistics to healthcare and aviation.
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About the Author
Alix Paultre
Editor-at-Large, Microwaves & RF
Alix is Editor-at-Large for Microwaves & RF.
An Army veteran, Alix Paultre was a signals intelligence soldier on the East/West German border in the early ‘80s, and eventually wound up helping launch and run a publication on consumer electronics for the U.S. military stationed in Europe. Alix first began in this industry in 1998 at Electronic Products magazine, and since then has worked for a variety of publications, most recently as Editor-in-Chief of Power Systems Design.
Alix currently lives in Wiesbaden, Germany.