Altiv Labs designs the sensor nodes, boards and radios that put production AI on real devices: energy-harvesting power paths, RF front ends and antennas, and the firmware and telemetry that carry the data to the model.
Recent projects
MIRI™, a compact sensor on a flexible PCB, reports temperature and location on energy harvested from RF. A second node takes radar measurements on power from an organic photovoltaic cell.
A gateway operating LTE, GPS, BLE and LoRa, with antennas matched on the gateway's own enclosure. Firmware on FreeRTOS with encrypted over-the-air updates; the fleet is managed through AWS Greengrass.
An automated optical inspection system that checks printed circuit boards for defects, fed by multiple high-definition cameras and scanners. The equipment maker designed the machine and its optics; Altiv Labs developed the detection and classification software that runs on the compute inside it.
Core Expertise
Advanced multilayer board design for the most demanding applications. From HDI stack-ups to high-speed differential pairs, every layout is engineered for signal integrity, thermal performance, and DFM compliance from day one.
End-to-end RF and microwave design from antenna conception to certification readiness. Our shielded lab supports characterization from 100 MHz to 8 GHz, with in-house EMC pre-compliance to eliminate costly surprises at the certification lab.
Board bring-up, power sequencing, radio stacks and application firmware on the vendor SDKs the silicon ships with, delivered as repositories your team can build and extend.
Bill-of-materials engineering that balances performance, availability and cost, with lifecycle management, multi-source alternatives and supply-chain qualification for every critical part. Design-for-cost is applied from the architecture phase: consolidation, commodity substitution where it doesn't cost performance, and total cost-of-ownership modeling for the volumes you expect.
Lab Equipment
Our lab is equipped with current-generation test and measurement platforms from the most trusted names in the industry, alongside the latest development kits for rapid wireless prototyping. Every instrument is regularly calibrated and traceable to national measurement standards.
Software & Tools
Industry-leading EDA platform for complete PCB design, from schematic capture through layout, design rule checking, and manufacturing output generation.
State-of-the-art 3D electromagnetic simulation for RF, antenna, and signal integrity analysis. Enables full-wave solver-level verification before any physical prototype.
Batteryless and ultra-low power
Batteryless and ultra-low-power circuits are our core expertise. We design devices that power themselves from radio waves and ambient light, with every microwatt accounted for, so they run for years with no battery to replace.
Rectennas that turn RF into usable power and organic photovoltaic cells that work under indoor light, paired with cold-start circuits, power management and storage sized from the measured harvest rather than the datasheet.
Circuits, firmware and radios built to run on microwatts. Every sleep, sample and transmit state gets an energy figure, and the budget is proven on the bench before a board is released.
Manufacturing Partners
We work hand-in-hand with established PCB fabrication and assembly houses and IoT hardware manufacturers to carry every design from first prototype through volume production — without compromising on quality, lead time, or cost.
Latest insights
hardwareIn this post, we demonstrate why traces routed beneath an RF path degrade an ESP32-S3 filter even when the schematic says they’re isolated, and how Track Keepout in Altium, CST re-simulation and component re-tuning restore isolation without giving up S₁₁ matching.
hardwareIdeal components cannot predict the losses and resonances of a fabricated RF filter. Part 3 evaluates frequency-dependent Murata 0402 models, selects practical component values, and transfers them into the CST 3D EM model to analyze S₁₁, EM fields, and power loss as a basis for EMI optimization.
hardwareAn ideal RF filter changes once PCB geometry is included. Part 2 imports the Altium layout into CST, uses EM co-simulation to expose trace, pad, and coupling parasitics, and re-optimizes the component values to restore the target S₁₁ response.
hardwareAn ESP32-S3 RF filter that passes simulation can still fail on the fabricated board. Part 1 of this series builds the foundation: a CLC PI filter designed in CST Studio Suite, optimized with CMA-ES across the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi channels, and carried into a controlled-impedance Altium layout.
Whether you're fighting signal integrity on a high-speed bus, chasing an elusive RF emission, or need a BOM that survives a supply chain shock — the lab is ready.
