Deterring, detecting, and investigating crime. Protecting people and assets. Controlling traffic. Monitoring remote sites.
Over the last decade, the use of wireless video surveillance systems has gone through a surge driven by improvements in technology and user demand to improve functionality and decrease the costs of these systems. Today’s video surveillance networks are based on high resolution IP digital cameras that require ultra-capacity backhaul to support these bandwidth-intensive applications.
As a result, the Department of Homeland Security, as well as other federal, state, and local government agencies, are using advanced wireless solutions as backup or as an alternative to fiber. BridgeWave point-to-point gigabit wireless systems efficiently support the performance and management of video surveillance systems and enable seamless and secure connectivity. BridgeWave provides a superior solution for backhauling ultra-high bandwidth video traffic for sensitive video imaging applications and provide fiber-equivalent connections by transmitting data over highly secure microwave and millimeter wave radio frequencies at multi-gigabit speeds.
Dallas Police Department protects and serves its citizens with innovative, crime-reducing video surveillance system backhauled by BridgeWave
Dallas is the No. 1 visitor destination in Texas as well as a leading business and financial center. The city also boasts the largest wholesale market in the world while serving as one of the top convention locales in the United States. For the Dallas Police Department, protecting the nation’s ninth largest city encompasses a never-ending focus on reducing crime while increasing overall satisfaction with public safety of its citizens.
In providing the highest levels of professional services, the Dallas Police Department continually embraces new technology tools and law enforcement best practices to assist in deterring, detecting and investigating crime. The department, which includes approximately 3,000 police officers and 500 civilian employees, was among the earliest proponents of video surveillance technology to reduce crime in dense urban areas of downtown Dallas. The success of a pilot project in early 2005 proved the viability of video surveillance cameras as an effective apprehension and crime-reduction tool.
According to Tom Lawrence, deputy police chief for the Dallas Police Department, the ability to monitor activity in real-time during peak entertainment hours in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas added a new dimension to the department’s law enforcement efforts. “We achieved a 96 percent reduction in violent crime while lowering non-violent crime by 48 percent over a four-month period,” he says. “It became very clear that this technology could provide greater geographic coverage of downtown, acting as a force multiplier.” With the assistance of an $840,000 grant from the Meadows Foundation, an in-state, private philanthropic institution, the department obtained funding to expand its pilot program and achieve its goal to reduce crime in “hot spot” areas of downtown by 30 percent within the first six months of installing a new, widespread state-of-the-art video surveillance system.
The City’s selected systems integrator, Bearcom, proposed a solution combining the latest wireless innovations, including IP video cameras, multi-radio mesh network nodes and high-capacity, Gigabit backhaul links to backhaul traffic to the monitoring stations using BridgeWave’s high-capacity point-to-point wireless links. Each BridgeWave wireless link carries traffic for up to 10 video cameras in hub-and-spoke as well as repeater configurations. “With BridgeWave’s high-speed, secure wireless links, the Dallas Police Department has gained a ‘future-proof’ network backbone that can scale to meet our evolving bandwidth requirements while helping us make downtown safer for our residents, businesses and visitors,” Lawrence concludes.
Systems designed for video surveillance applications
Longer range deployment with multi-gigabit capacity
True alternative or backup to fiber
Maximum security for communications and data protection
Upgradability to meet growing capacity demands
