Energy Saving Stack (ESS)
How to maximise your device battery life using Digtal Matter's ESS
Written by Daan de Waard
Updated at October 22nd, 2025
Table of Contents
A New Benchmark in IoT Battery Efficiency
What is the Energy Saving Stack (ESS)?
Battery life is one of the most limiting factors in cellular IoT. Every second your modem stays connected to the network burns precious energy, whether you’re tracking vehicles, assets, or wildlife.
Digital Matter’s Energy Saving Stack (ESS) overcomes battery-life limitations by combining network features (NB-IoT/LTE-M), device firmware expertise, and dedicated software platform architecture to minimise connection time and idle drain. Digital Matter devices with ESS enabled can see improvements which more than double battery life in the field without compromising frequency or payload.
ESS is exclusive to devices within the Digital Matter ecosystem.
The Energy Saving Stack isn’t just a firmware tweak, it’s a complete overhaul of how Digital Matter connect. Benefits include:
- 2× longer battery life (depending on network and parameter settings).
- 100% more uploads for the same energy budget.
- Faster recovery mode initiation.
What Makes ESS Work?
The ESS achieves these gains by leveraging network-level advancements and upgrades within the Digital Matter ecosystem. ESS can achieve its most impressive results on networks that support these two modes:
Power Saving Mode (PSM): PSM lets the modem stay ‘registered’ on the cellular network, but turns off the radio between reports. Devices sleep deeply, consuming microamps instead of milliamps. Network timers control how long the device can sleep before needing to wake and re-register.
Release Assistance Indication (RAI): RAI applies to the NB-IoT network only and tells the network “I’m done, you can release me now.”. It does this quickly, ending the connection instantly after the uplink, instead of waiting for the network’s inactivity timer, which can be greater than 10 seconds. This reduces the ‘tail time’ power draw dramatically.
PSM and RAI Considerations
- While these two network technologies greatly amplify the benefits of ESS, it will still provide some benefit for devices even where their network provider doesn't support PSM and RAI.
- Not all Cat-M1 networks support quick release times, which may lead to a reduced or negative benefit for PSM and RAI enabled devices.
- NB-IoT networks which are not up to the latest 3GPP standards may not support RAI altogether, although this is very rare. We recommend enabling both PSM and RAI when using an NB-IoT network.
| Device Models Supported | Firmware Required |
|---|---|
| Barra Edge 4G | FW1.11+ |
So how do I set this up?
Enabling ESS is straightforward.
Start by updating the device firmware (i.e. for a Barra Edge it is FW v1.11+) and then follow the steps below depending on your network selection.
For devices using the NB-IoT network only
The goal is for the device to attach on NB-IoT, wake to send data quickly, ask the network to end the session immediately (RAI), then fall into deep sleep (PSM) until the next scheduled report.
- Navigate to the Device Admin parameters and under + Add Parameters, select ESS Server tab and update the Enable ESS dropdown to Yes. The remainder of the settings are best left on default.
- Next, add the PSM Settings tab and update the Enable PSM/RAI with ESS dropdown to Yes.
- Lastly, add the Network Setting tab and define the NB-IoT network.
For devices using Cat-M1 (LTE-M) only
The goal is to keep the Cat-M1's broader coverage/mobility while still gaining deep-sleep savings with PSM.
- Navigate to the Device Admin parameters and select ESS Server tab and update the Enable ESS dropdown to Yes.
- Lastly, select the Network Setting tab and define the Cat-M1 network.
What if my SIM support both Cat-M1 and NB-IoT?
Some SIM providers support both CAT-M1 and NB-IoT. Devices using this SIM can opt for Admin Parameter configurations as per below:
Other custom network configurations are possible, and are explained in the articles below.
What's next?
Learn more about:
