Mobile Surveillance Solution Author: Designation: Company: Basanta Kumar Sethi Sr. Software Engineer Kelltontech Solutions Ltd. Document No: ENG-20150728 Version: V0.03 Page 1 of 7
Introduction The Mobile Surveillance Solution is an IP based surveillance camera solution, which proposes to use Android & IOS devices as IP cameras. This can be adapted to monitor events or incidents to accomplish the goal of remotely monitoring and managing the safety and security at any place any time. Mobile Surveillance Solution Overview This provides an overview of the components used in Mobile Surveillance solution. The Videos from mobile IP camera can now be streamed to the user s web browser with the help of web server and streaming server. Page 2 of 7
Solution components The following components make up the Mobile Surveillance Solution: Mobile IP camera Application: This is the core component of the Mobile Surveillance Solution. This software manages, stores and delivers video to the streaming server. This application is installed on the user mobile to turn the mobile into an IP camera. Streaming Server: The streaming server is a gateway between the mobile IP camera and the user. This software manages the routing of videos from mobile IP camera to the user s web browser using webserver. Web Server: The web server allows the user to monitor and control the Mobile IP cameras using a web browser. It enables the user interface to turn on/off the IP camera, switching the front/back camera using web browser. Solution Benefits The benefits of Mobile Surveillance Solution include: Access to video at any time from any network location using a web browser. Central monitoring and control of the IP camera is easier. Scheduled/location based footage recoding. Turning On/Off the mobile IP camera using a web browser. Record footage using NVR software. Works with cellular (WCDMA/LTE) and Wi-Fi network. Android and IOS device can be turned into an IP camera. No worries for the IP address; works on dynamic IP addressing. Mobile IP Camera Application The Mobile IP Camera Application is the core component of this solution. It performs the following video surveillance system functions. Recording of the video for review and archival purposes. Encoding the video for streaming purposes. Routing the encoded video to the streaming server over packet switching and circuit switching network for review or archival purpose. User interface for configuring the IP camera. Page 3 of 7
Processing the remote commands to switch on/off camera and selecting front/back camera. Storage management for storing videos in SD card or internal storage. Congestion and Error control to avoid packet loss and retransmission of the packet to the streaming server Streaming Server The streaming server implements application and transport layer protocols to manage the routing of video packets from Mobile IP camera to the webserver or network video recorders. The streaming server provides a virtual interface to archive the mobile IP camera videos into Network Video Recorder. Streaming server functions include Routing the video to web server for review. Virtual interface for the camera to integrate into Network Video Recorders. Storage functionality for video archiving. Web server The web server is responsible to processes request via HTTP to distribute the live or archived videos to the user. The web server s primary function to store the Mobile IP camera configuration, process the streamed video and deliver the web pages to the user. The delivered web pages allow the user to monitor and control the Mobile IP cameras through a web browser. The web server performs the following functions: Implements the video outbound protocols for streaming video in web browser. Web API for request and response messaging. Surveillance IP Camera System Surveillance system is broadly divided into two types: Centralized Surveillance system Distributed/ Decentralized Surveillance system In both systems, reviewing is same but archiving works differently. Page 4 of 7
The surveillance system uses Video Management Software (VMS) to review and record the camera footage. The Video Management software is known as NVR/DVR. Centralized Surveillance System: In the centralized surveillance system the Video Management Software (NVR/DVR) is installed in a central computer. In this system, the cameras rely on NVR or DVR where a central recording database resides to complete the video management process. The major drawback of centralized surveillance system is the failure of recording computer. If the recording computer fails the system management fails and access to recorded footage is lost. Distributed Surveillance System: In the distributed surveillance system the VMS is install in the camera, which means each camera on the system, has NVR functionality. In distributed system, the footage is stored at the edge and transferred to the recording database located in the recording computer for final processing and synchronization. This method is very effective as it can drastically reduce bandwidth load on the main network and spreads the risk of recording failure across multiple servers. In this system if recording computer fails still the system works, the recorded footage are stored in the camera edge storage. Page 5 of 7
Following is the comparison chart of centralized and distributed system Architecture Centralized Distributed Recording Centralized Recording Distributed Recording Bandwidth High Low Cost High Low Reliability Mid High System Risk High Risk Low Risk Mobile surveillance solution is a distributed system; it ensures real time monitoring and effective bandwidth management. The footage loss will be very minimal. Mobile IP camera Communication model In IP video surveillance, the communication model is typically server-client or host client communication. The server is the Mobile IP camera and the client is the Web Browser (Personal Computer) or storage hard disk (NVR). The Mobile IP camera will generate a video stream as long as there is a client request. Depending on the specific network and system requirements, sometimes a unicast communication model is sufficient, but in other circumstances a multicast communication model is required. Unicast: Unicast is one-to-one communication. In unicast transmissions, the packets are sent from one mode to another individually. The network uses the unicast address to identify the source and destination address. Multicast: Multicast transmission is one-to-many communication. In multicast transmission, the host sends the packets to a special address, which represents a group of clients or destination receivers. When a client wants to request the multicast transmission, it must join the multicast group. The host sends a single copy of the multicast data to multicast address, and all members of the multicast group will receive the packets simultaneously. Even if many clients request a packet from the host, the host needs to send only one copy of the packet. This minimizes the impact to the host s performance as well as the overall network load. Page 6 of 7
Quality of Service: QOS is a mechanism that ensures higher quality network performance for critical applications. Traditionally, without QOS, the network will process all traffic equally, and transmission will be based on the network s best effort. The QOS assigns different priority to different network traffic.. The traffic with higher priority will be processed first.. This ensures the network performance is reserved for the most critical applications and can guarantee that these critical cameras will experience effective and reliable communication. Therefore, the transmission of critical cameras will be optimized by QOS in order to reduce frame loss, stabilize the jitter, and minimize latency. It ensures the mobile IP camera generates packets with a priority tag. The priority tag identifies the packet to the specific switches and router, so that it can be transferred to the web browser at the earliest. ***** Page 7 of 7