Firetide MIMO Technology Powering Wireless Deployments In Miami, Phoenix

  • Sep 29, 2009

In deployments in Phoenix and Miami, Firetide's new MIMO-based (802.11n) mesh is providing economic and performance benefits for city-wide municipal infrastructures.

Early Firetide customer deployments indicate that the greater performance and capacity of the new MIMO-based solutions will enable the expansion of wireless mesh networks into large-scale, city-wide infrastructure for multiple municipal applications and services.

Anixter has supplied product to many large wireless municipal projects throughout the U.S., starting with a 2006 wireless IP video surveillance project for the Phoenix Police Department which used previous generations of Firetide wireless infrastructure mesh. Anixter was pleased to evaluate the performance of the HotPort 7000, Firetide’s new MIMO-based equipment. Firetide engineers worked hand in hand with BCD, a Phoenix-based full-service integrator that performed site survey, installation and testing in the dense urban environment of downtown Phoenix.

“With the unprecedented performance of 275 Mbps, the results exceeded any of our expectations for throughput,” said Chris Jensen, national director of public safety technologies for Anixter. “Such wireless backhaul capabilities will make city-wide enterprise infrastructure possible for many municipalities in the US, with public safety agencies, city departments and even the public utilizing the same network and greatly improving the ROI of wireless installations.”

The City of Miami Police Department is currently using the Firetide HotPort 6000 and the MIMO-based HotPort 7000 equipment in Miami. The City of Miami was interested in deploying the Firetide MIMO solution to increase their video surveillance coverage in the downtown area.

As part of phase-1 of their wireless video surveillance project, Miami was using seven HotPort 6000 nodes meshing six IP PTZ cameras. During a recent upgrade to the system, the Miami Police Department replaced the backhaul connection with a Firetide HotPort 7000 link, and added two dual-radio Firetide 6000 nodes converting the initial point-to-point installation to a fully meshed configuration.

This modification added redundancy to the system and eliminated the single failure point of vulnerability.

“Previously, we had a bottleneck at the aggregation point that was limiting video quality,” said Tony Utset, CCTV project manager and executive assistant to the chief. “The Firetide MIMO product allowed us to seamlessly integrate and expand our capabilities.”

In addition, the Miami Police Department is now ready to embark on a phase two of its video surveillance project to deploy more than 150 additional cameras throughout the City of Miami. The Miami PD business practice is to configure all cameras to transmit simultaneously at 30 FPS/4 CIF. The HotPort 7000 has the bandwidth capacity to meet these high demands and adds flexibility to the camera configurations by allowing multiple cameras (one PTZ and two fixed) to be installed at one location, supported by a single node providing evidence-grade video.

“Firetide’s MIMO will allow us to significantly advance the coverage of our network, as the preliminary tests have yielded dramatic increases in throughput and improved video quality,” Utset said. “This will assist the police department in achieving its goal of monitoring and recording high-quality video, enhancing our ability to identify suspected offenders, and reduce misidentifications. The expanded capacity of the Firetide MIMO infrastructure will also allow the seamless integration of new applications such as ALPR (automatic license plate recognition) without degrading the performance of the network.”

“Furthermore, we will be able to replace another manufacturer’s more expensive backhaul connections with HotPort 7000 links, which will greatly simplify network operations since we will not need to manage two separate sets of equipment, or deal with compatibility issues. Overall, the greater bandwidth not only gives us more coverage per node but expands the opportunity to be more creative in our deployments.”

“These results from Anixter and the Miami PD illustrate the tremendous performance and subsequent economic advantages of using Firetide MIMO technology to expand city-wide infrastructure for a variety of applications on a single network,” said Bo Larsson, CEO at Firetide. “Firetide MIMO infrastructure mesh is the solution for large-scale, multi-service municipal networks.”

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