Midland Tech | Case Study – Long Distance WiFi Link To Transmit Live CCTV Streams
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26 Nov Case Study – Long Distance WiFi Link To Transmit Live CCTV Streams

The Client

Our client runs two leisure businesses in rural Shropshire, which are around a mile apart. The second site is not permanently manned so they rely on a CCTV system to remotely monitor comings and goings.

 

The Challenge

The CCTV system uploads live video stream using a very slow internet connection, and at the primary site this video is streamed to various screens downloaded over an equally slow connection. As a result the video constantly freezes and drops out due to a lack of bandwidth (there are 9 cameras in total). Also the internet connection is very slow for any other use, such as internet browsing and downloading files, due to the saturation caused by the video streaming.

 

The Solution

We investigated upgrading the internet connections, but unfortunately due to the rural location superfast fibre broadband is not available and there are no plans to make it available in the near future. The other option of a dedicated lease line would have been too expensive, with costs in the region of £5,000 per year.

After a full site survey we decided to implement a point-to-point wifi link which would link the two sites via wifi over the mile or so distance between them. This involved installing a small dish and wifi antenna at each end, and aligning them to get the best possible connection.

Once aligned and connected, we were able to stream the live CCTV video over this wifi connection and therefore the internet connections could either be cancelled or used for other purposes. Even though we didn’t have a line of sight connection, the speed over the wifi was still 20 times better than the internet connections were achieving.

The cost of this solution was less than £400 including the wifi equipment, a huge saving over a leased line installation but still achieving the same, if not better, connection speeds.

 

The Benefits

The video stream from the CCTV is now very clear with no freezing or dropout of pictures. The client is able to monitor the remote site in real-time without any time lag in transmission.

The internet connection at the remote site has been cancelled as it is no longer required, with a cost saving of over £300 per year.

The internet connection at the primary site is no longer downloading live video and is therefore much faster for normal internet use.