TRAFFIC WATCH
Uncompressed digital transmission systems from AMG have been chosen for a number of high-profile traffic management applications, including the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the Channel Tunnel rail link in the UK. Alan Hayes explains some of the key benefits compared to a compressed video based system
The market for CCTV surveillance in traffic management and other transport applications are rapidly growing. The UK has led the way with the National Roads Telecommunications Services (NRTS) project by the UK Highways Agency. The project will provide a national digital system linking more than 14,000 roadside devices, including message signs and emergency telephones, and up to 4,000 cameras and traffic monitoring systems to the Highway Agency’s network of traffic control centres. Whilst primarily designed to provide a road safety monitoring system, NRTS will also give drivers real time travel information to plan their journeys, and create safer roads, thanks to the nationwide distribution of CCTV footage to travel information and navigation companies.
Our Guardian-Lite transmission solution was selected for the NRTS project because it makes it possible to use uncompressed, digital video transmission even on a large wide area network with hundreds of cameras over hundreds of kilometres. The transmission technology simply replicates the capabilities of an Ethernet system and transmits the entire content of the video images back to the control room. It also allows for drop-and-insert of camera signals – as and when required – as well as dual redundancy. It even carries Ethernet which for example could be used for simultaneous retrieval of DVR images or – in the case of the NRTS – is used for taking control signals to the roadside positions”.
 UK motorway bridge with camera at night time
The background for AMG’s success stems from a dedicated and focused research and development process that was was started 10 years ago. The company saw a gap in the market for transport and traffic management surveillance and decided that the way to generate a true wide area network was to transmit the video signal in a digital format where it could be repeated effectively indefinitely. As a result, AMG developed a series of digital fibre optic transmission solutions.
The success of this approach is documented with a number of high profile projects using AMG’s transmission technology such as; the traffic management system in Athens for the 2004 Olympics, high speed rail links in South Korea, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link between the UK and France, city centre and surrounding highways traffic management in Dublin - Ireland, a number of toll roads in India as well as the 17km tunnel system under Stockholm in Sweden.
Uncompressed versus compressed video
Dr Alan Hayes, managing director of AMG
We have seen the market gravitate towards the adoption of compressed video based systems using IP technology for the transmission of the video signals to the control room or point of viewing and analysis. The reason for this choice has come about due the lack of awareness of options available in terms of uncompressed transmission.
Uncompressed video transmission has often been seen as only available in point-to-point architectures, which have serious limitation in terms of resilience, scalability and flexibility of the system. Interestingly when we meet end users, they have now started to highlight a number of challenges which some of the projects are currently facing. Amongst other things the application of intelligent video analytics software – as evidently video analytics software requires an uncompressed video image to actually add significant value.
Users have also highlighted that there is a risk of the entire transmission network crashing when running with IP technology. This is actually a very important point and it should not be taken lightly. It can be very difficult indeed to establish where the error causing the crash has been introduced. Hence, fault location efforts can lead to long down times. This is clearly something that is unacceptable for observation critical surveillance systems, such as road-side traffic management. On top of that, there is also the risk of mischievous or malevolent hacking at an unprotected remote roadside location”.
Compression limits the usability of CCTV systems
It is important to note that with the lack of standards for compression of the video images, some systems also have difficulties with recompression due to different manufacturers’ equipment installed in the same system. This again can lead to backward as well as forward compatibility issues, and we have found that our approach to CCTV transmission is now seen as the answer to the conundrum.
It is evident that for systems where pre-event analysis takes place, either using traditional security operators in a control room or the more recent pixel based analysis software, the reduction in video quality caused by compression can severely limit the usability of the CCTV system.
Video compression unfortunately compromises what you can do. In a highways system for example it affects traffic management capabilities and security, which is where the market is heading right now. It is therefore gratifying to see our technology add significant value and save costs on the transmission infrastructure.
 more information please visit www.amgsystems.com (opens a new window)
AMG Guardian-Lite
Series at a glance:
- Full bandwidth digital transmission format – no compromise on video quality
- No compression – real-time video – no inherent latency
- Single fibre operation – reduced infrastructure requirement
- High camera counts – up to 64 channels on single-mode fibre
- Single, dual and 4 channel insert modules – both for single-mode and multimode fibre
- Dual redundant variants – both for single-mode and multimode fibre
- Multiple simultaneous video plus data transmission – enables remote control of camera functions plus bi-directional data
- Multiple drop off points – easy routing for multiple control rooms
- 100BaseT Ethernet data transmission option – data interface boards selects 100BaseT or RS232/422/485
- Unlimited repeat – for long distance transmission
- SNMP compliant network management – for remote fault reporting and diagnosis.
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