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NTN IoT Design: Building Global Asset Trackers

By RF Wireless Expert Team

For years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been constrained by a massive geographic blind spot. While standard 4G/LTE and cellular IoT networks (LTE-M/NB-IoT) work flawlessly in urban environments and along major highways, traditional cellular infrastructure only covers roughly 15% of the Earth’s surface.

If you are designing an asset tracker for a shipping container crossing the South Pacific, or a wearable collar for cattle in the remote Australian Outback, terrestrial cellular networks simply won’t work. Historically, satellite tracking required bulky, expensive, proprietary hardware.

Today, that paradigm has shifted thanks to Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). By integrating satellite connectivity directly into standard 3GPP cellular protocols, developers can now build compact, battery powered global asset trackers using off the shelf silicon. Let us understand NTN connectivity, real world use cases and how to design the hardware to make it work.

The Connectivity Solution: What is 3GPP NTN?

The turning point for global IoT was the introduction of 3GPP Release 17, which standardized support for NB-IoT and LTE-M over satellite networks. This means that a single IoT device can seamlessly roam from a ground based cellular tower to a satellite orbiting in space using the same standardized chipset and protocols.

When designing for NTN, engineers typically utilize two types of satellite constellations, each offering different connectivity profiles as follows.

  • Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO): Orbiting at approximately 36,000 km, GEO satellites rotate at the same speed as the Earth, providing continuous coverage over a massive area (up to one third of the globe per satellite). Because of the extreme distance, the data throughput is low (typically 1-2 kbps). GEO NTN is ideal for small, critical alarm payloads and direct to device emergency messaging.

  • Low Earth Orbit (LEO): Orbiting much closer to Earth (600 to 800 km), LEO satellites resolve the link budget challenges of GEO, supporting higher throughputs (20 to 40 kbps) and lower power consumption for the IoT device. Because LEO satellites orbit rapidly (roughly 90 minutes per orbit), IoT devices currently rely on “store and forward” architectures holding data until a satellite passes overhead. As LEO constellations grow denser, this will evolve into continuous, low latency global coverage.

Satellite IoT Use Cases

The ability to deploy low cost, battery powered satellite devices unlock massive potential across several industries as follows.

1. Maritime and Global Logistics

Consider a cargo ship navigating the South Pacific Great Circle route, passing near Point (Nemo) the most remote location on Earth. Tracking high value goods (like medical supplies, luxury cars or sensitive industrial equipment) end to end is critical for insurance and supply chain visibility. NTN allows a small tracker on a shipping container to transmit temperature, humidity and location data regardless of terrestrial borders or ocean expanses.

2. Smart Agriculture and Livestock Monitoring

In regions like Northern Canada or Patagonia, farms can span tens of thousands of square kilometers far beyond the reach of standard cell towers. NTN enables ultra-low power wearables (like smart collars) to track the location, movement and health of livestock, preventing theft and allowing farmers to optimize grazing patterns.

3. Critical Infrastructure Monitoring

There are millions of kilometers of oil and gas pipelines and high voltage transmission lines cutting through harsh, isolated environments. NTN sensors can be deployed at regular intervals along these linear corridors to monitor for leaks, structural faults or environmental hazards (like early wildfire detection) without the need to build expensive local network gateways.

Hardware Choices and Design Considerations

Designing an NTN capable asset tracker requires a careful balance of processing power, RF performance, and extreme energy efficiency. Following points mention how this new hardware can be designed.

1. Highly Integrated System in Package (SiP) Solutions

In the past, satellite trackers required a separate cellular modem, a proprietary satellite modem, a microcontroller and a GNSS receiver. Today, hardware choices like the Nordic nRF9151 SiP consolidate all of this into a single, ultra-compact package which is just 12 x 11 mm in size.

To build an NTN tracker, you should look for SiP which supports following features.

  • A multimode LTE-M/NB-IoT modem with NTN firmware support.
  • An integrated application processor (such as Arm Cortex-M33) with ample memory to handle edge processing and sensor data.
  • Built-in GNSS for precise location tracking.

2. Advanced Power Management (eDRX and PSM)

Because NTN devices must operate in remote locations for years on single battery, power management is the most critical design factor. Developers must heavily utilize cellular sleep protocols (PSM and eDRX) as follows.

  • Power Saving Mode (PSM): Puts the modem into a deep sleep, waking only at preset times or triggered by an external alarm (e.g. an accelerometer detecting movement).
  • extended Discontinuous Reception (eDRX): Allows the device to remain registered to the network but sleep for longer intervals between checking for incoming messages.

3. Location Vs. Power Trade off

Finding an asset globally requires GNSS (GPS), but acquiring a satellite fix is highly power intensive. When designing your tracker’s firmware, implement logic that trades location accuracy for battery life. For example, if a shipping container is at sea, pinpointing it to the nearest 5 meters (GNSS) is an unnecessary waste of power; using cellular/satellite network locationing to find it within a few hundred meters is sufficient and saves massive amounts of battery.

Conclusion

Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) are erasing the boundaries of traditional IoT. By combining standardized 3GPP protocols, expanding satellite constellations (from providers like Skylo and Iridium) and highly integrated, low power SiPs, hardware developers can now build compact, affordable asset trackers that truly work everywhere on the Earth.

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