Gaining Remote Control
Security manufacturers, integrators and end users are embracing IP-based technology for remote surveillance applications with enthusiasm
- By Laura Swift
- Feb 01, 2010
IP-based security systems are cost-effective, flexible and easy to manage, which are important factors as end users strive to streamline their security systems and get the most for their money.
A streamlined IP remote surveillance system incorporates high-definition megapixel IP cameras, a wireless infrastructure and open-architecture video management software.
“Wireless systems are useful for remote surveillance because they eliminate any concerns about the geographical location of a camera,” said Gadi Piran, president of OnSSI.
The Role of Cameras
“The swing to IP camera technology in 2010 will probably be the widest swing in the last five years,” said Raul Calderon, vice president of marketing at Arecont Vision. “More IP cameras are being deployed because the cameras can be placed anywhere on a network and they don’t have to be centralized.”
IP cameras are ideal for remote surveillance because of their flexibility and high-resolution imaging capabilities.
“Our high-definition megapixel IP cameras are remote surveillance ready because they have an onboard server and Web interface,” Calderon said.
Calderon said megapixel cameras are cost efficient because they can be used in a wide variety of applications and can identify details more effectively than analog cameras.
“In any surveillance application, the more information you have to discern what happens in a scene, the better,” Calderon said. “This is critical in a remote surveillance application because achieving fast response time is difficult in remote environments.”
To cover a wide area, Calderon said users can increase a megapixel camera’s resolution to widen the field of view.
“Where you might need two or three cameras to capture detail in defined areas using standard-definition cameras, by increasing the field of view you might only need one megapixel camera,” Calderon said. “There are a lot of surveillance applications in education, and Arecont Vision’s 10 megapixel cameras with H.264 compression are applicable for an advanced remote surveillance system.”
Verint Systems’ IP cameras are useful for remote monitoring, including in retail and banking applications.
“A typical retail application has several hundred cameras,” said George Maroussis, Nextiva product manager at Verint Systems. “End users in the retail industry like IP cameras because they are portable and the megapixel high-definition picture provides clearer images.”
Maroussis said the defined images produced by megapixel cameras are useful for retailers who use remote monitoring for incident management.
“The transition to H.264 saves about 50 to 60 percent bandwidth, so the compression algorithms used on the H.264 cameras provide very big network savings,” Maroussis said. “This technology is also useful for cost-conscious banks that deploy cameras at hundreds of remote ATM locations.”
Outdoor Applications
For outdoor monitoring in perimeter and municipal applications, a system with daylight and thermal imaging cameras provides 24- hour surveillance.
“Thermal cameras sense heat and can produce images in challenging environments, including in darkness, shadows, fog and haze,” said Bill Klink, vice president of security and surveillance of FLIR Systems. “Our thermal cameras have IP encoders in them, so they can transmit video over IP networks.”
Klink said thermal cameras are useful for industrial, border security and municipal settings and are cost effective because they can be used in place of expensive lighting installations.
“Thermal cameras are a greener technology because they decrease light pollution and an organization’s carbon footprint,” Klink said.
In 2005, the city of Pittsburg, Calif., installed a wireless camera network, which consists of a combination of daylight and FLIR thermal imaging cameras.
“We have a total of 49 wireless cameras currently up that stream video back to the police department,” said Capt. William Zbacnik of the Pittsburg Police Department.
Zbacnik said the police department has been continually deploying cameras every year and the IP-based open architecture allows cameras to be easily added to the network. FLIR thermal imaging cameras also are used to remotely monitor isolated perimeter areas of the Dow chemical plant. The additional cameras are installed at the city’s major intersections and at some schools and parks. The city will deploy 22 more cameras and expand the wireless infrastructure in 2010.
A Wireless Connection
A wireless infrastructure acts as the gateway in an IP-based remote surveillance system, allowing video to be transferred from a camera to a monitoring platform. Wireless IP-based systems eliminate the need for wires to be installed in an area, which decreases labor and construction costs.
“The reason IP is becoming so popular is because of its flexibility and transportability,” Maroussis said.
“Before the advent of IP-networked systems, various technologies were required to transport video signals to a central location,” Piran said. “However, networked systems use the same technology to transport signals from remote locations as they do from inside the building, i.e., the corporate network.”
Multiple options are available for building a wireless infrastructure. Verint’s Nextiva wireless edge devices, which include video transmitters and receivers, access points, bridges and repeaters, are designed to reach fringe areas and can transmit video over license-free 2.4 and 5 GHz wireless bands, as well as the 4.9 GHz U.S. and Canada public safety bands.
AvaLAN Wireless specializes in providing wireless connectivity for remote surveillance applications in the unlicensed 900 MHz and 5.8 GHz radio spectrum.
“We’ve been producing point-to-multipoint wireless systems for six years now,” said Matt Nelson, president and CEO of Ava- LAN Wireless. “Many of our products are designed to prevent line-of-sight issues.
Nelson said AvaLAN’s wireless bridges are reconfigured right out of the box, so they can easily integrate with any network.
Firetide Inc. uses wireless mesh technology to manage video streams from cameras. The combination of Firetide’s HotPort nodes, designed to provide a mesh infrastructure, and HotPoint access points create a wireless network.
“Mesh provides infrastructure connectivity, low latency and high throughout,” said Ksenia Coffman, marketing manager of Firetide. “Mesh is a proprietary technology, and it’s not bogged down by standards.”
The Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles, Ill., installed a video surveillance system in 2007 using Firetide wireless network equipment to stream real-time video to the central security office in the mall.
Network cameras were installed in overt locations both inside and outside the 1-million-square-foot mall, around the 120 specialty shops, four department stores and 89 acres of parking spaces.
“We have numerous high-resolution fixed network cameras, PTZ cameras, video management software, NVRs and DVRs,” said Michael Williams, senior general manager of Golf Mill Shopping Center. “Since the installation, we’ve had reduced incidents of theft and vandalism, and the wireless network allows us to quickly stream video footage to police.”
Williams said Golf Mill chose to install a wireless mesh system because it saved labor and hardware costs.
“The wireless system provided them with a lot of flexibility,” Coffman said. “At the time the security system was installed, the mall had just completed renovations. They didn’t want to rip everything out again to install cablings that would have been required for an analog system, so they opted for a wireless IP system.”
The high throughput and flexibility of the mesh also allows security officers to view live video feeds remotely from PDAs.
Video Management Platforms
An effective video management platform for remote surveillance systems acts as a tool that organizes, controls and displays video from multiple network cameras dispersed over a wide area.
“I think one of the biggest trends in remote surveillance is the advancement of video management systems,” Calderon said. “Enterprise-class video management systems can now bring in information from multiple locations to a centralized or decentralized architecture and can command, control and coordinate data.”
Maroussis said the most robust video management systems unify platforms and systems.
“The video management software is the orchestrator of many devices, so the software is a central focal point that allows users to orchestrate where they want things to go and where to store video, which allows for redundancy,” Maroussis said.
Maroussis said retailers tend to think at the enterprise level and like the idea of remote installations. Verint’s retail traffic analysis software integrates with video management software, which allows users to see the densities and patterns of people in a store.
“Once you’re in the data environment, you can expand on analytics,” Maroussis said.
OnSSI’s Ocularis management system couples analytics with video management, as well.
“The Ocularis platform combines information from multiple systems in one place,” Piran said. “The system provides immediate access to video from unlimited cameras connected to multiple servers at multiple sites through a map-based interface. The video feeds can come from any networked location.”
Ocularis’s open architecture streamlines and simplifies video management by unifying NVRs and IP and analog cameras.
“In the networked world, video becomes data to be managed in the broader context of enterprise-wide physical security systems,” Piran said. “Retail applications have embraced the ability to tie together many locations and view multiple locations remotely via networked video systems. Users need a simplified, intuitive way to effectively manage additional video feeds and complex physical security systems.”
Many video management platforms, including OnSSI products, stream live video to Blackberrys, iPhones and PDAs.
For perimeter and large-scale outdoor monitoring, FLIR Systems’ Nexus video management software plots camera locations on the map of a facility. The software allows users to control multiple cameras on the network with a graphical interface, with the option to add more cameras as needed.
The flexibility of IP-based cameras, wireless networks and robust video management platforms will facilitate the expansion of remote surveillance systems in the next decade.
“We expect the adoption rate of IP-based technology solutions to accelerate in 2010 as the economy continues to rebound,” Piran said.
This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Network-Centric Security.
About the Author
Laura Swift is the New Products Editor for Security Products magazine.