Small data strategy matters in global asset tracking, helping to locate ‘dark trailers’, writes Alastair MacLeod (pictured, below), Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ground Control, a company that provides satellite-centric M2M (machine-to-machine) and IoT (Internet of Things) technology services.
For anyone running logistics operations, the number of ‘dark’ assets right now is a persistent frustration. This might be the 2,000 ‘dumb’ trailers you cannot locate, the 10,000 shipping containers that have vanished into a port, or the high-value refrigerated unit that is off-grid and failing. This ‘million-container problem’ is a costly blind spot in the global supply chain, and for decades, the business case for solving it has remained just out of reach.
The simple dream is a cheap, ‘peel-and-stick’ tracker that can be bolted to a container and forgotten about for years, reliably pinging its location once a day from anywhere in the world. With a new generation of satellite connectivity arriving, often delivered via cellular standards like NB-IoT but transmitted over non-terrestrial networks (NTN), the promise is that a single, inexpensive, global chipset will finally connect everything. However, the reality is more nuanced; small implementation details can fundamentally make or break battery life and project economics.
The most critical constraint in scaling asset tracking efficiently is not the satellite or the tracker hardware itself, but the protocol; the digital language used to send the message. Consider a tracker’s daily location ping as a tiny postcard of data, which, in a common technical example, might be just 22 bytes. The crucial difference is how that postcard is sent.
The standard internet protocol, UDP/IP, acts like a heavy packing crate. As it was not designed for such tiny messages, it wraps your 22-byte postcard in around 28 bytes of unnecessary headers and overhead. Suddenly, your small message becomes a bulky 50-byte package. The alternative is a hyper-efficient method called Non-IP Data Delivery (NIDD). NIDD is designed specifically for this task and sends only the 22-byte postcard, with far less protocol waste. For small, infrequent messages, avoiding UDP/IP headers significantly reduces airtime and energy per successful transmission.
Using the inefficient packing-crate method has two damaging effects on the long-term strategic viability of asset tracking projects. The first is cost inefficiency: you end up paying for data you do not use. Some NTN NB-IoT offers bill packets with a 50-byte minimum, meaning very small payloads are rounded up. Over half your airtime bill could be paying for the useless wrapping. The second is reduced field life. The biggest power drain on any tracker is its radio and forcing it to transmit a 50-byte package keeps that radioactive for longer than sending a 22-byte one. This higher power consumption is a real concern for long deployments. Repeating this daily across thousands of trailers means devices may need maintenance years earlier than planned.
That essential efficiency, sending only the data that matters, is precisely why NIDD and other small-message approaches are invaluable tools for extending battery life in satellite IoT.
So, why are we not all using the postcard, or NIDD, method yet? Rollouts are phased, and initial NTN NB-IoT services typically carry application data over UDP/IP. This often stems from cellular-first thinking, which underestimates satellite realities such as tight link budgets and how a few extra bytes can lengthen radio-on time and drain batteries faster.
While switching to NIDD is an integration project requiring rework on message formats and backend ingestion, NIDD support is on the way, with industry roadmaps pointing to NIDD-capable NB-IoT services from 2026.
For the massive IoT ambition of tracking 50,000 unpowered trailers, power budgeting is everything. If you are aiming for decade-scale lifetimes, logistics leaders should plan for efficiency by ensuring next-generation trackers are designed to leverage features like NIDD as they become broadly available. At the same time, those needing to act immediately should consider proven postcard-style, non-IP services such as Iridium SBD and Viasat IoT Nano, which avoid IP overhead and materially improve battery life and data economics today.
The promise of a single, low-cost global standard is powerful, but logistics leaders must look beyond the hype. The right question is not which technology wins, but which mix of network, protocol, power source and reporting profile fits each specific asset and business case. Get the bytes and the watts right, and you will build a solution that lasts both in the field and on the balance sheet.
