Introduction

Maritime border safeguarding is highly crucial to a nation’s security. Many governments in the world have implemented warning facilities around border coasts to prevent potential threats from happening. An effective warning requires real-time and coordinated responses in order to cope with possible criminality around the coastline. Therefore, many maritime border authorities have been searching for a mobile, connected surveillance solution that can instantly monitor event situations and provide real-time reports.

The Situation

Many of today’s warning facilities are typically deployed as stationary and isolated from the event-occurring situations and frequently fail to provide instant, real-time response. With the rising complexity of marine border securities in the present, a practical way to improve the situation is a mobile surveillance platform that can travel with coastal patrolling personnel to record incidents and send response to operation centers. Unlike ordinary mobile NVRs, the needed solution should deliver higher resolution and faster response to accurately reflect the incidents.

A fast-growing surveillance solution provider with headquarter in Europe came to Lanner with a request for a hardware platform that can be deployed onto coastal patrolling vessels. The requested platform has to act as a surveillance hub for connections with cameras and satellite terminals in a coast guard vessel. Besides, as deployed in a vessel, mobility, reliability and performance must be taken into considerations. The client specifies certain technological requirements for their maritime border surveillance.

PoE IP Camera Inputs

Since the operating environment is located in a coast guard vessel, PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) IP cameras offer more flexibility as they can function without power inputs.

High Processing Power

For real time video response, the platform must be designed with a powerful CPU to efficiently stream and compress video contents at low bandwidth.

Military-grade Endurance

For reliable operations on the move on water surface, shock and vibration resistances with military standards are highly necessary in order to withstand tide waves and currents.

Wireless Network

In a remote area like maritime border, 3G/4G/LTE wireless connection offers the desired mobility to provide real-time response and cellular communications since coastal vessels are usually on the move. To act as the hub of an integrated surveillance solution on a coastal guard vessel, the requested platform may function with a satellite terminal for satellite network signals when the vessel is located miles away from the coast.

GPS Navigation and Tracking

When a potential criminality seems to take place, GPS can help locate the spot where the incident is happening. On the other hand, it also provides location tracking for the operation center or other crew vessels when reinforcement or intervention is needed.

Externally Accessible Data Storage

When handling streamed video and audio contents, a removable HDD/SSD drive bay can provide sufficient file storage for future reference.

Wide Operating Temperature

The ambient on the sea may vary significantly from day and night, day-to-day and locations. Therefore, a system with wide operating temperature is necessary.

The Solution

Once technological requirements have been specified, Lanner came up with LVC-5000-B(series) as the ideal hub for the integrated surveillance solution requested by the client.

LVC-5000-B comes with 4 PoE LAN ports that can serve as IP camera inputs. In terms of IP camera connectivity, the platform offers mini-PCIe modules with SIM card readers to support 3G/4G/LTE specifications. With cellular communications, IP cameras, real-time response and image broadcasting are able to function properly without excessive installations. For additional communication strength miles away from the coast, LVC-5000-B may be connected to function together with a satellite terminal through properly established Ethernet connections.

To efficiently deliver real-time video/audio response, LVC-5000-B is engineered with powerful Intel Core-i7 CPU (for B2 and B3 models) that can compress and stream video/audio contents at a very low bandwidth. The high-performing CPU can deliver detailed images and audio for recorded incidents without occupying high-volume bandwidth.

Built for mobility applications, LVC-5000-B has certified shock and vibration resistance with MIL-STD-810-G standard. In addition, the platform offers GPS sensor connection for location navigating and tracking, highly useful when reinforcement or intervention is needed. Regarding data storage on the marine environment, LVC-5000-B provides a removable HDD/SSD drive bay that can offer sufficient storage capacity for video/audio files that can serve as future references.

Endurance is also another major factor when operating on a sea. Since the ambient temperature in the maritime may vary greatly depending on time, location and waves, LVC-5000-B offers wide operating temperature from -25 to 55°C.