Video surveillance has proven to be extremely beneficial to help protect not just buildings and homes, but also lives by combining a wide variety of ever-evolving technologies. In recent years, there has been incredible growth in the video surveillance market with law enforcement agencies, municipalities and transportation centers embracing video surveillance to enhance security and traffic monitoring across cities. This has resulted in the general public feeling more comfortable taking public transit, making purchases at shops, parking their cars and frequenting areas that are well covered with security cameras.
The use of surveillance technology has increased across multiple markets to protect the world’s ports, airports, cities and transportation infrastructure, as well as schools, hospitals, government and other critical environments.
For each of these markets, it is important to capture, analyze and record video. However, in order to achieve the desired results, surveillance systems must contain both hardware and software solutions coupled with a surveillance network, or physical infrastructure to carry video feeds from their point of origin to control rooms or command centers.
One of the prime reasons for deploying video surveillance systems is their capability to provide 24/7 monitoring. Therefore, lost data serves to undermine this primary purpose of the system. To ensure the unfailing operation of these services, highly reliable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy networks must be in place. Surveillance networks require connectivity to carry video feeds from multiple deployed cameras distributed over one or more sites, to control rooms for viewing, recording and analysis. Flawless connectivity is the key to providing a consistently high quality of service assurance and security protection - even more so as video surveillance technologies mature and require more bandwidth with greater transmission speeds.
The Connectivity Challenge
With the rise in global terrorism and resulting increased focus on public transit security, authorities around the globe recognize the numerous benefits of using video surveillance networks for public safety. The number of cameras per area has increased significantly, while at the same time, more and more surveillance cameras are installed in new locations and different environments. Developments in surveillance technology, such as megapixel technologies, enhanced video analytics, and improved pan, tilt and zoom provided today by cameras often surpass infrastructure capabilities and cause network overloads. The demand on these networks to continuously expand is exponential. This can be further complicated with wireless/mesh networks that in addition to surveillance payload, deliver internet connectivity to users of mass transit, adding to increased demand for bandwidth.
In the race to maximize system capabilities, the importance of utilizing network components with greater adaptability is becoming more critical. This substantial growth requires surveillance networks to provide even more applications and greater bandwidth, and to support additional law-enforcement authorities. Solution architects are constantly seeking technologies to reliably transport ever-growing video data. Taking full advantage of the benefits provided by today’s technology, and tomorrow’s potential, will require making the right choices in the configuration of the network, the heart of surveillance systems.
Maximizing the ‘carrying capacity’ on the network is crucial and is accomplished through choosing cost effective technologies. As today’s video payload is IP-based, it is usually provided by a service-provider, and thus its constant payload pattern results in premium fees. Tested and proven (carrier-grade) wireless systems, with sufficient capacity and the essential AES 256, are available and affordable. Also, authority owned or privately held networks built from existing fiber, combined with the above-mentioned wireless systems, are becoming viable alternatives and adopted in more and more projects.
Building flexible network models will aptly address the network capacity challenge. Emerging surveillance technologies today often surpass the maximum capacities of deployed networks, whether mesh or wireless. Furthermore, surveillance networks typically have a longer life expectancy than the devices (cameras, radars) that connect to them. These facts irrefutably indicate the need for networks to be designed and built with the potential capacity of tomorrow; as much as a tenfold increase on the demand recognized today. Planning for future demand means that a network is well positioned to take advantage of new technical advances.
A flexible design facilitates implementation of upgrades, and patches in existing technologies. It is also the key to maintaining quality of services, and a consistent supply of adequate bandwidth. Failure to plan could quickly turn network limitations into showstoppers. It is highly desirable that a network be flexible enough to take full advantage of new camera capabilities as they arrive, without needing to replace network infrastructure components, particularly when it comes to trains and bus stations.
Network congestion has become a trend. It occurs when a link or node is carrying so much data that quality of service deteriorates. A fundamental problem is that all network resources are limited, including router processing time and link throughput. To ensure optimal utilization of new bandwidth intensive applications, while avoiding adverse effects on Quality of Service (QoS) caused by overwhelming capacity demands, transmission technology capabilities must improve. This demand will very soon not be able to be handled, and millimeter wave wireless networking links will have to be implemented between network aggregation and access layers.
Readily Accessible Connectivity Solutions
Selecting a means of connectivity is becoming more and more vital for managing congestion and wirelessly connecting cameras to a network. In today’s heavily utilized integrated networks, the wireless portion of the network often functions as a major performance bottleneck. When this occurs, quality of service deteriorates, and users experience problems such as queuing delays, packets loss and the blocking of new connections.
Mobile video is consumed today in a number of ways. One method is recording video on trains, for example, followed by offline downloading of the data to a command center; another is recording on trains and downloading the video to a command center at each bus station (semi real-time); and finally there is real-time streaming from the train to the command center.
While the first option may be supported by low speed networks, today’s market is trending towards the second (semi real-time) option. This requires high bandwidth networks capable of fast downloads of the video surveillance footage recorded on public transit. The recorded video must be transmitted through the network to a command center. This mode of video downloading and transmitting necessitates a substantial amount of capacity, and only extremely high and reliable bandwidths are able to meet this scope of demand.
Several techniques may be used to transmit video feeds from cameras to monitors at command and control facilities. Selection of which video transmission method to use is often based upon a number of factors such as, cost, latency, location and distance of cameras to control rooms, existing available infrastructure, and of course, signal velocity (speed). There are two main technologies for transmitting video.
The first is wired technology, which relies upon copper, coax cables or fiber to transmit the data. Copper and coax cables provide moderate reliability but limited capacity. As a result, this technology is cost effective for short distances. Fiber is often considered a reliable solution because it transmits at high bandwidths and is immune to electromagnetic interference.
Wireless technology, the second technology, relies upon either sub-6GHZ frequency or millimeter wave technology. Also known as Wi-Fi, 5GH or, sub-6GHz is a commonly deployed wireless solution, but growing congestion can hinder stability and speed of the connection. Millimeter wave technology (mmW) uses higher frequencies of 40GHz (most prevalent 60, 70/80GHz), and is considered to be a next generation solution offering reliability with excellent throughput speeds. It is the closest alternative to fiber available today.
It is unequivocal that fiber is the optimal connectivity solution. However, fiber is not always available, or practical (due to the heavy investments associated with fiber trenching or fiber leasing). There are two additional wireless alternatives for video surveillance network connectivity.
Sub-6 GHz Spectrum (Wi-Fi)
Sub-6 GHz wireless products are the most widely deployed of wireless appliances today. They utilize the sub-6 GHz spectrum with its underlying technology known as Wi-Fi, and are considered cost effective because they are license free and there is no need to register or obtain permits from the government for the use of the spectrum. Even though these products are easy to use, market development has put a severe strain on the scalability of Wi-Fi solutions at both the access and aggregation network layers. As a result, today’s Wi-Fi is susceptible to security problems, bandwidth degradation, radio interference and also network latency. Many of these shortcomings are especially noticeable in surveillance networks, where critical voice delivery and constant, high bit rate video delivery applications are heavily at work. These systems lack the core capabilities to keep up with the exponential growth in capacity demand.
Millimeter Wave Wireless Technology >40GHz (most prevalent 60, 70, 80GHz)
A reliable and cost effective solution for this challenge is millimeter wave wireless technology. As capacity is also dependent on the amount of spectrum (bandwidth) a service utilizes, the huge amount available in these waves inevitably facilitates incredible bandwidth. The technology is future proof, scalable and provides excellent performance. mmW solutions also provide valuable advantages that are comparable to Wi-Fi.
Technological advances have made mmW technology possible for low cost consumer devices. In addition, it is easy to use through the simple alignment of narrow beam angles, with no spectral analysis required prior to deployment. Its tiny size enables short and simple approval processes for deployments on existing street fixtures.
Because mmW technology provides extended capacity and diminished latency, it ensures that each camera receives the bandwidth necessary to deliver a constant, reliable video stream at the highest possible frame rate. This is of vital importance in securing train and bus stations, and other transportation depots. With ample frequencies available, it provides the widest and most unpopulated spectrum available today to facilitate bandwidth-rich, high capacity wireless connectivity.
It is notable that millimeter wave wireless technology solutions facilitate a forward-looking architecture and are significantly more modular than their market alternatives. Their flexible topology allows for impressively scalable configurations, as new small-cell nodes may be added with minimal backhaul planning. mmW solutions are exceptionally secure due to their essentially low beam widths, and relatively low radio transmit power; guaranteeing little probability of intercept and detection, which is vital for the transference of confidential material.
Using mmW wireless also provides additional benefits, including high-resolution camera support. A greater bandwidth (up to 2Gpbs) provides support to multiple multi-megapixel cameras operating at full frame rate. By using an uncongested spectrum, users are assured interference-free performance and bandwidth usage is optimized to enhance connection speed and QoS. The solution is scalable and supports simple bandwidth and deployment expansion in confined spaces, vital to the transportation market.
In a Nutshell: The Importance of Future Proofing your Security Network
Video surveillance networks of today are significantly more intelligent and dynamic than ever before, but smart as they might be, they present their own challenges. Video surveillance has extended from local surveillance to remote surveillance, from indoor places to outdoor places, and from office environments to production environments. These changes make it more difficult to adopt and utilize video surveillance services, as surveillance networks need to adapt to multiple new and complex scenarios.
The high cost of fiber and the need for flexible deployment options make wireless and other solutions very attractive for network operators. However, the vulnerabilities presented by Wi-Fi networks are becoming more and more evident, as surveillance solutions become more widely used and supplementary technology evolves.
Reliable network connectivity is crucial to the success of a network surveillance system, particularly for public transit. Today, people need wireless technology that is reliable and flexible, and that can leverage the components of an existing network, especially as the demand for surveillance systems bandwidth with greater transmission speeds continues to grow.
Itzik Ben-Bassat has been managing Siklu Communications as its CEO for the last five years.
