Like many municipalities, the city of Cambridge, located roughly 100 km west of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, was concerned about crime and the spread of drug use in its downtown area. Of particular concern were outdoor venues such as parking lots and empty lots where people congregate
THE CHALLENGES
Limited fiber reach | Flexible and rapid deployment | High-bandwidth applications | Security of sensitive data
Cambridge has fiber connections connecting several municipal buildings and continues to deploy more where it makes economic sense. Fiber is used to connect fire stations to City Hall, for example. However, the required application of outdoor video security needed more flexibility to accommodate the necessary camera locations. Most parking lots, intersections, and pedestrian walkways do not have a fiber point of presence (PoP) nearby. This meant the answer would almost certainly have to be a wireless solution.
The solution to be chosen had several additional requirements. It needed to be flexible when it came to expanding the video security coverage, it had to be secure, and it also had to have enough capacity that it could support additional high-bandwidth applications. Fulfilling these requirements would ensure that the City of Cambridge would stay on the leading edge of smart city technology. One example of a future application is deployment of public Wi-Fi. The wireless network would then need to be able to backhaul gigabit-per-second public Wi-Fi access points (APs) with no additional truck rolls.
THE SOLUTION
Siklu by Ceragon EtherHaulTM 600 Series | V-band mmW radios | One-Week Deployment
The successful bidder on the project was Alliance Security Systems. After investigating 5 GHz and 60 GHz solutions, Alliance determined that only 60 GHz products could meet all the requirements today and tomorrow. Alliance selected the EtherHaul™ 600 point-to-point (PtP) 60 GHz solution from Siklu by Ceragon as it met project requirements. It had plenty of capacity (from 100 Mbps up to 1 Gbps, software upgradeable), was extremely flexible in deployment (up to 1 km range), was small in size (for deployment on light poles), and was inherently immune to interference.
The same could not be said for the 5 GHz systems they reviewed. Such systems suffered from the ever-increasing Wi-Fi noise floor in 5 GHz, and could not offer the capacity the mmWave solution was able to provide – let alone support future high-bandwidth applications such as public Wi-Fi backhaul.
Phase one of the program supported 10 multi-lens camera deployments, and the network design had six 1 Gbps Siklu by Ceragon V-band radios collocated at the city clock tower. This dense colocation was a result of the very narrow 60 GHz radio beams and the abundant spectrum (14 GHz) available. Deployment of the Siklu by Ceragon radios was accomplished within a week. The deployment used Axis Communications P3717 multi-lens cameras managed by a Genetec Security Center unified security platform.
THE RESULTS
Rapid deployment | Gigabit capacities | Future-ready network | Reduced crime
Since the initial phase-one deployment with 10 cameras, the city operates the network providing access to police as requested for specific incidents and investigations. Since the installation of the video security network, a car theft ring was apprehended and there has been a noticeable reduction in crime.
Phase two involves adding seven new cameras to be supported by Siklu by Ceragon’s V-band system, 1 Gbps EtherHaul™ 600 units, which are scheduled to be installed as soon as the light poles are available. Thanks to the flexibility to place cameras where needed, additional future expansions are also in discussion.
Interested in speaking with one of our experts?
