Overview

Wavesight are proud to have been selected to supply the communication infrastructure in yet another fibre-to-wireless switch-over. This time, partnering with AVA Security & Communications, Wavesight were chosen to design a wireless CCTV network that would allow Monmouthshire County Council to transmit images from Caldicot, Monmouth, Chepstow and Abergavenny back to a central control room for monitoring.

Requirement

As a consequence of the austerity measure in place, most local authorities have been exploring ways of reducing costs while still maintaining high levels of service in their CCTV Networks deployed. None more so than Monmouthshire County Council, which has managed to achieve significant cost-savings by opting for wireless transmission as opposed to expensive fixed-line leased fibre. The requirement was for the cameras in each town (including existing analogue cameras and some new IP PTZ cameras) to be connected wirelessly using Wavesight’s Ethernet Bridge. All images were to be sent back to a central location over a private digital fibre backhaul link that existed between the four towns – where they are recorded and monitored.

The Solution

Given that the council had already invested in a private digital fibre connection within the county – the backhaul infrastructure installed was also being utilised to transmit the CCTV images from each town as well. Besides allowing the Council retain total ownership of the network no additional operational expenditure was being incurred.

The overall solution utilises more than 77 licence-exempt Wavesight Ethernet bridges to provide connectivity for around 29 cameras to the control room. Despite the camera columns being located on narrow streets (in a hilly region shrouded with buildings and trees)-no special towers were erected for achieving line of sight. Existing camera columns, in combination with streetlight columns, were used to create a very reliable network that would be operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Wavesight radios optimised for video transmission, are known for ensuring the lowest levels latency allowing multiple hops/daisy chained wireless links to be created without a problem. The Council eventually became the sole owner of a dedicated highly secure, private infrastructure, capable of growing, if required with the minimum risk of additional investment. The flexibility offered by wireless technology means that additional cameras can be connected in a very short timeframe and at a fraction of the cost compared with fixed leased line cables Commenting on the project Phil Grunewald, Managing Director at AVA Security & Communications, said: “We decided to work with Wavesight for this project because we were confident that their experience and knowledge in urban-surveillance projects surpasses that of other Ethernet bridging vendors in the marketplace. We needed to partner with a company that could design a reliable wireless infrastructure solution which will give the client the ability to scale up their system if required in the future.”