Asset tracking and smart labels with NB-IoT

Asset tracking and smart labels with NB-IoT

Tracking applications: pallets in transit, smart labels on goods, livestock and pets, healthcare equipment, mobile assets across industrial campuses, share a difficult design challenge: they need to be everywhere, run on a small battery, and often work indoors and outdoors on the same day, cost-effectively across many use cases at once.

This guide explains how NB-IoT, combined with GNSS and Wi-Fi positioning, addresses this challenge in a single integrated module, and why the ST87M01-1301 and ST87M01-2301 are the first all-in-one modules to combine connectivity and positioning features within a power and footprint envelope suitable for smart labels and miniature trackers.

The asset-tracking design challenge

Which wireless protocol, and how many?

The first design choice on a tracker is connectivity, and it is the one with the longest tail. A Bluetooth-and-GNSS pairing is cheap but cannot reach the cloud without a phone in the loop. QR codes and NFC tags need close proximity. Cellular reaches everywhere but historically came with footprint, power and certification penalties that were prohibitive for smart labels.

Multi-radio complexity

Adding GNSS, Wi-Fi positioning, NB-IoT to one device traditionally means multiple SoCs, multiple antennas, multiple middleware stacks and multiple certification campaigns. Power consumption escalates accordingly, a problem for devices expected to last for years on a single small cell.

Qualifying one design across many applications

Smart labels for goods, trackers for assets, monitors for livestock and devices for personal safety all have different mechanical constraints, certification regimes and operational profiles. Without a flexible base platform, each variant becomes its own engineering project, and economies of scale collapse.

Why NB-IoT plus GNSS and Wi-Fi positioning is the right answer

NB-IoT is the only LPWAN technology that gives a small, battery-powered device cellular-grade reach to the cloud without dragging an LTE smartphone modem along with it. Pair it with GNSS for outdoor location and Wi-Fi positioning for indoor location, and one device covers the full geolocation envelope:

• GNSS for outdoor geolocation: the ST87M01 receives and decodes signals from GPS and Galileo constellations to determine accurate real-time position outdoors.
• Wi-Fi positioning for indoor geolocation: the module detects nearby Wi-Fi networks and forwards SSID, MAC and RSSI public information over the NB-IoT link, where a cloud service triangulates the asset's location.
• Software-defined radio switching: the same hardware switches between the two positioning methods depending on context, so a parcel inside a warehouse and the same parcel on a delivery truck both report a useful location.

Add an extra ADC channel for connecting external sensors directly, and a smart label or tracker becomes a self-contained device: location, condition data and connectivity in one ultracompact package.

Use cases

• Logistics and asset tracking: pallets, containers, equipment, returnable transit packaging.
• Smart labels for goods: high-value or perishable shipments where the label itself reports its journey and condition.
• Livestock and pet monitoring: tags applied externally or, increasingly, implantable, supporting both commercial livestock management and conservation programs.
• Healthcare and personal safety: wearables, personal alarms, lone-worker monitoring.
• Smart cities: shared mobility, equipment tracking, and hard-to-reach asset monitoring.

ST87M01-1301 and ST87M01-2301: all-in-one connectivity and positioning

The ST87M01-1301 and ST87M01-2301 are the variants of the ST87M01 family designed for asset tracking. They combine:

• LTE Cat NB2 (3GPP Release 15) NB-IoT cellular connectivity. ST87M01-1301: B1, B3, B5, B8, B20 and B28 certified; ST87M01-2301: B2/B4/B5/B12/B13/B66/B85 certified.
• Multi-constellation GNSS for outdoor positioning.
• Wi-Fi scanning for indoor positioning, with SSID, MAC and RSSI captured for cloud-side triangulation.
• An ultracompact 10.6 x 12.8 mm LGA package, the smallest NB-IoT module on the market.
• PSM floor current below 1.2 µA and off-mode current below 0.5 µA, designed for multi-year battery operation.
• RED, RED-DA and GCF certifications, and certifications from the major European mobile operators.

Full specifications and certifications on the ST87M01 product page.

Connectivity at scale: ST and Wireless Logic

Connectivity for an asset-tracking fleet is more than a SIM. It involves coverage planning, fleet visibility, and the operations infrastructure to keep thousands of devices online over their lifecycle. Wireless Logic operates a mobile core network purpose-built for IoT, with reach into 165 countries through direct partnerships with 50 mobile networks and provides the Conexa platform behind the EVKITST87M01-2 evaluation kit.

ST and Wireless Logic together give designers a single, validated path from prototype on the bench to managed fleet in the field, without stitching together connectivity contracts late in the project.

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Antenna design: ST and Ignion

A multi-radio device with NB-IoT, GNSS and Wi-Fi sharing a small enclosure puts antenna design under real pressure. Ignion's Virtual Antenna technology offers compact, multi-band antenna components and an AI-assisted design platform (Oxion 2.0) that shortens RF iteration cycles and improves first-pass certification rates.

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Take the next step

• Blog: ST87M01: First all-in-one NB-IoT, GNSS and Wi-Fi positioning module for asset tracking and smart labels, the design rationale and engineering trade-offs explained.
• Webinar: Wireless performance that holds beyond the reference design, with Ignion, on antenna design and Virtual Antenna technology for compact trackers.
• Webinar: From first data to fleet operations with lifecycle visibility, with Wireless Logic, on managing connectivity for tracking fleets.

• EVKITST87M01-2 with Conexa Low Power SIM: Arduino-compatible shield, includes 50 MB of NB-IoT data for six months.
• ST87M01 product page: datasheet, certifications, ordering for the ST87M01-1301 variant.
• STDES-ST87M01IGN - ST87M01 reference design with chip antennas.

• NB-IoT vs LPWAN: choosing the right technology, where NB-IoT plus positioning fits relative to LoRaWAN, Sigfox and LTE-M trackers.