In a world blanketed by hardware, traditional security and monitoring rely on an expensive, power-hungry formula: install cameras for sight, deploy radar for tracking, and build heavy infrastructure to connect it all. Tiami Networks turned this crowded ecosystem on its head by asking a radical question: What if the sensors we need can track what's invisible?
The answer Tiami created is the PolyEdge Multifunction Sensor, a platform that earned the Best AI & Edge Computing Solution at the Best of Sensors 2026 awards by turning ambient noise into actionable intelligence. The awards were held May 6 at Sensors Converge 2026 in Santa Clara, Calif. Winners were named in 15 categories, selected by a panel of tech professionals.
Carving Certainty Out of Thin Air
PolyEdge transforms ubiquitous, ambient wireless signals—the 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi waves already pulsing through our offices, factories, and military bases—into a real-time environmental awareness system.
Every time a human walks through a room, a door opens, or a drone hovers overhead, it leaves a microscopic footprint, subtly disrupting the radio frequency (RF) environment. PolyEdge acts as a passive digital seismograph for these invisible waves. By capturing these subtle signal reflections and distortions, the system maps the physical world without ever emitting a single radio signal of its own.
Processing at the True Edge
What caught the judges' attention is how PolyEdge executes this complex data processing. Instead of routing massive amounts of raw RF data to a distant cloud server—which hogs bandwidth and introduces critical latency—PolyEdge feeds these reflections directly into embedded machine learning models running locally on the Nvidia Jetson edge computing platform.
By keeping the intelligence local, the system classifies threats, tracks movement, and detects anomalies instantaneously. This localized architecture dramatically slashes network bandwidth consumption and ensures continuous operation even if an external internet connection is severed.
Why It Won: Privacy, Versatility, and Defense
The Best of Sensors awards celebrate engineering that solves real-world vulnerabilities where traditional sensors fail. PolyEdge stood out because it addresses three major limitations of current technology:
- True Privacy-by-Design: Because it doesn't rely on visual imagery or optical cameras, PolyEdge provides occupancy and security monitoring in camera-restricted zones like hospitals, restrooms, and classified facilities.
- All-Weather Resilience: Unlike optical systems that require clear line-of-sight and sufficient lighting, PolyEdge is blind to darkness, smoke, or heavy fog. If wireless signals can pass through it, PolyEdge can sense it.
- Counter-UAS Innovation: In defense sectors, it successfully tracks low-visibility and completely "RF-silent" drones—the exact threats that easily evade traditional active radar and active RF scanners.
By aligning with the emerging paradigm of Integrated Sensing and Communications, Tiami Networks effectively transforms existing communications infrastructure into a distributed sensing layer. PolyEdge won because it delivers a privacy-aware, infrastructure-efficient solution that captures the precise environmental threats that traditional systems often miss.
Tiami said PolyEdge was in pilots and demonstrations in 2024 and field validation in 2025. The product is now available for pilot programs, evaluation deployments and targeted production.
Other winners of Best of Sensors can be found online.