Securing What Matters: Wireless Video Surveillance Systems for Enhanced Security

Wireless video-surveillance systems are a common and reliable tool in security, safety and law enforcement. Most systems are based on IP radio technology and are designed to stream video from remote IP cameras through a wireless network operating either using license-free or licensed frequencies.

Secure and reliable links over the Internet have become a major area of concern for many organizations around the world wishing to transmit large volumes of real-time data including video. Both private security companies and government agencies are now turning to Fixed Broadband Wireless Access (FBWA) solutions to support their infrastructures for secure Video-over-IP transmissions.

InfiNet Wireless has been active in this arena for many years now and has already supplied reliable video surveillance solutions to all corners of the world, with a number of powerful features that significantly enhance performance and reliability, such as unconditional media-applications traffic, prioritization of data types and flexible Quality-of-Service management.

Why are InfiNet Wireless solutions the best choice for Video Surveillance applications?

1. Video Surveillance and Traffic Management applications are usually implemented in a way to allow multiple video streams to be monitored centrally. Consequently, these types of applications require high capacity remote or subscriber units with robust and reliable uplink capabilities. InfiNet solutions are fully optimized for such applications, providing high throughputs required for streaming live high-quality video without interruptions. TDD – the ratio of the incoming/outgoing flows is dynamically changing in order to allocate bandwidth to the mostly demanding direction. This is a relevant feature in video surveillance because the uplink direction has much higher demands.

2. Being one of the most challenging applications for any wireless-based solution, live video streaming requires high-capacity radio links in order to maintain multi-megabit streams. InfiNet Wireless solutions have been carefully engineered and fine-tuned to meet these exact requirements. Both the base stations and subscriber units are capable of handling multiple video streams. The base stations provide high sector capacity which is field-upgradeable from 80 to 240 Mbps and is designed to use less of the valuable radio spectrum than traditional point-to-multipoint wireless systems. InfiNet CPEs are able to handle bandwidth requirements between 4 and 50 Mbps net capacity.

3. The availability of a high capacity radio link is only half the story. InfiNet systems also ensure the transmission of high-quality video streams in real-time mode by allowing the operator to set priorities over other types of traffic to ensure the lowest possible latency and smooth display of video signals. In effect, an operator can prioritize bandwidth for different types of traffic so that low priority traffic won’t impact negatively upon mission-critical data. Traffic shaping of the data streams can be assigned to different logical channels previously configured with certain priorities and transfer rates. In case of traffic bursts which can lead to delay variations, the traffic shaping feature can buffer excessive packets and send them over the physical medium at a constant rate.

4. Robustness and Reliability have always been two of the most critical requirements for any outdoor wireless deployment, whether used for video streaming or other applications. InfiNet solutions have been deployed in thousands in all parts of the world and in the most extreme environmental conditions, from the plains of Siberia and the dunes of the Sahara to the humidity of the Equator. A unique dust and moisture protection system, a built-in lightning protection and ultra-safe sealing for the outdoor units ensure uninterrupted operation of the radio units. InfiNet products show a high reliability of up to 99.9999 %, and an extended temperature range from -55 to +60 °C, on an aluminum enclosure with unique pressure control, dust, water and moisture protection according to standard.

5. IP networks deployed for the transmission of video streams can also be used for other purposes such as data and voice transmission. InfiNet Wireless's entire range of solutions can not only provide high capacity transmission platforms for these applications, but also have built-in sophisticated and powerful industry standard Quality-of-Service management features used to ensure top priority settings and highest quality for real-time and time-sensitive applications.

6. Error packets can be an issue in video surveillance because it will result in loss of information that might be crucial. ARQ feature will retransmit the error packets and ensure a high quality of the stream transmission, as video surveillance traffic is mainly UDP based.

7. Multicast traffic switching – in complex scenarios with multiple Base Stations connected to the same switch, IGMP snooping is the solution to avoid multicast storms. With IGMP multicast learning enabled (compliant with RFC 4541), users can subscribe to multicast groups and each group will receive only its relevant packets.

8. Secure and easy to manage – easy to install, ready to go, efficient management (Web GUI, CLI, SSH, SNMP, NMS), security over the air using advanced 128 bit encryption.

9. Flexible frequency range – the common WiFi band of 2.4 GHz is overpopulated. InfiNet gears can operate in a wide range of frequencies from 3.1 GHz up to 6.4 GHz.

Success Story: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

As part of a “growth acceleration program”, the Brazilian Government made some investments in order to narrow the gap between the richer and poorer districts of the region, aimed at reducing violent crime and improving the overall security and personal safety of its citizens across the region. The State of Rio de Janeiro made the decision to deploy a wireless broadband network specifically to support existing CCTV and newly-expanding IP surveillance systems across 26 targeted areas of the city. Using InfiNet's InfiMAN 2x2 range of products, they got a high-capacity wireless network that was quick to install and incredibly economical to operate. The excellent performance and bandwidth flexibility of the technology, enabled significantly to reduce the time to deploy and upfront network investment.

Check out the whole story along with challenges and benefits, here: City-wide Wireless Video Surveillance and Security Network