Government Technology - January 2009 - (Page 33)

“The room is set up like a battleship, with video surveillance specialists sitting around in homeland security desks.” Jim Argiropoulos, first deputy chief of staff, Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications Milwaukee’s video system is designed to scale to more than 100 cameras. The hybrid systems include the benefits of fiber without the costs of building a complete fiber infrastructure. For example, the city of Reading wrote an RFP for a fiber solution but instead opted for the hybrid developed by Wi4Net, according to Bruinzeel. “In the process, we said, ‘Wireless is available and has the ability to give a fiberlike experience if you design it right,’” Bruinzeel said. A 100 percent fiber solution wouldn’t have been cost-effective and wouldn’t have met expectations for video resolution and frame rate. The hybrid solution can run at 30 frames per second at high resolution. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula. “It really depends on the city and what their expectations are,” Bruinzeel said. “In our Long Beach deployment, we’re expanding from 29 to 59 cameras and it all aggregates to a single aggregation point in 4.9 [GHz]; there is no fiber. To bring those 59 cameras all in one location, we’re running those streams at six to eight frames per second.” That’s still a big improvement over the first-generation dual/single mesh radio approach that has limited capacity, Bruinzeel said. “You would never bring 59 cameras to one location [with dual/single radio]; if you bring 10, you are doing well.” Single- and dual-radio networks are subject to congestion as the number of network users increases. By contrast, multiple-radio networks feature a radio that accompanies each node on the system, which ensures that there’s no interference. Though Reading built its system from scratch, one benefit of the hybrid system is the ability to use existing communications, cameras and other infrastructure. For example, a security system with cameras can become a part of a citywide surveillance system. A typical security setup would run 10 cameras to a digital video recorder. That system could easily be transferred to an IP- based system using an encoder and tied into a citywide system. Suited for Video Chicago’s system was built with $35 million of Urban Area Security Initiative grant money. The system used 500 miles of fiber and 850 miles of copper that was already in place. The city added 30 miles of fiber and 180 cameras in the central business district, Mesh Network: a communications network composed of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. The nodes work in harmony with each other, creating the “cloud” or network. The 4.9 GHz band is licenseprotected spectrum with sufﬁcient capacity for video surveillance. Licensees are authorized to operate on an authorized channel in this band for 10 years. The 2.4 band has 14 frequency channels, 11 of which are permitted for unlicensed use by the FCC. The 2.4 band is limited by the number of noninterfering channels available. adding to the “hundreds, into the thousands,” of cameras installed across the city since 2004, according to Jim Argiropoulos, first deputy chief of staff of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications. The city cut costs by using existing infrastructure where available and then adding the wireless nodes. “Of course fiber is expensive,” Argiropoulos said. “Depending on where you put it, you could be looking at the high end of $1 million a mile. When you start huband-spoking it for redundancy with a wireless solution, you can propagate that network much cheaper than you can laying fiber.” In the future, Chicago could stream video into the mobile data terminals of 2,500 police squad cars. The city is planning for an aggressive crime analytics model to accompany the system, which makes the video quality critical. “You need to make sure you do it right the first time,” Argiropoulos said. “We’re using Single-Radio Architecture: Uses same frequency for access and backhaul and is subject to interference as the number of users increases. Dual-Radio Architecture: Separates access frequency from backhaul frequency limiting interference, though still can suffer interference on the backhaul. Multiradio Architecture: Has dedicated, separate radios for the access and each backhaul route, ensuring there’s no interference between nodes. [mesh network provider] Firetide and finding in the 4.9 [GHz] licensed spectrum it’s some of the best in the industry in high-aggregate bandwidth.” Chicago’s video is streamed to a control room at 30 frames per second of full-motion video from 1.2 megapixel cameras. The control room is staffed with 15 positions, each of them able to talk to police units via a touchscreen radio system and also generate a service call through the computer-aided dispatch system. The cameras are located at specific latitude and longitude coordinates and 23 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - January 2009

Government Technology - January 2009 Contents Point of View On the Scene Big Picture Four Questions for... Stemming the Retirement Tide Getting the Picture Fact of Matter Money Trail Rays the Roof Trick or Tweet? The Modern Way to Vote Products signal:noise

Government Technology - January 2009

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