Key insights (AI-powered):
ALEC’s IoT-specific compression highlights how innovations at the protocol level can significantly change the economics of connectivity, particularly for satellite links. By reducing payloads rather than relying on cheaper airtime, solution providers can extend device lifespan, densify deployments, and delay or avoid network upgrades. Open source/commercial dual licensing will likely accelerate experimentation and standardization of the ecosystem around message-level compression primitives. This development is consistent with a broader IoT trend toward application-focused, edge-efficient computing to keep large-scale sensing financially and energetically sustainable.
The open source compression codec enables satellite IoT at a tenth of the cost
ALEC (Adaptive Lazy Evolving Compression), an innovative compression codec designed specifically for IoT sensor data, is now available under open source and commercial licenses. This Swiss technology reduces data transfer volumes by up to 90%, which directly impacts the bandwidth costs and battery life of connected devices worldwide.
The problem: billions of sensors, terabytes of data
The Internet of Things is experiencing explosive growth. By 2030, over 30 billion connected devices will be continuously transmitting data. For companies managing sensor fleets – be they in agriculture, manufacturing, logistics or energy – transmission costs are becoming a major barrier to innovation.
David Martin, the founder of ALEC, explains:
“Traditional compression solutions like gzip were designed for files, not IoT streaming. Compressing a 24-byte message with gzip actually expands it. ALEC was designed from the ground up for per-message compression.”
The solution: Adaptive compression with evolving context
ALEC introduces three important innovations:
- Lazy compression: The codec transmits its encoding decision first, allowing the receiver to prepare before data arrives.
- Evolving context: The encoder and decoder share a dictionary that improves over time and learns patterns specific to each sensor.
- Priority system: Each message is classified from P1 (critical) to P5 (routine) to ensure security alerts are never delayed by routine data.
Results from practice
- Agriculture: Soil sensors achieve 83% compaction, battery life extends from 6 months to 3+ years
- Production: Vibration monitoring with 97% compression, enabling 2,000 sensor deployments without network upgrades
- Satellite IoT: Transmission costs have been reduced from $0.10 to $0.01 per message, making global asset tracking economically viable
Focus: Satellite IoT, a rapidly growing market
ALEC is particularly well suited to the satellite IoT market, where each byte transmitted costs 100-1000x more than cellular. With emerging LEO constellations such as Astrocast, Swarm (SpaceX) and Kinéis, millions of sensors will soon be communicating from anywhere on Earth – assuming transmission costs can be controlled.
“Without efficient compression, satellite IoT remains a niche market reserved for critical applications.” says David Martin. “ALEC democratizes access by making global asset tracking 10x cheaper.”
Availability and Licensing
- Open Source (AGPL-3.0): Free for open source projects, research and evaluation
- Commercial License: From €500/year for proprietary products
The codec is implemented in Rust and ensures performance and memory security in a footprint of just 2 KB of RAM – ideal for embedded microcontrollers.
