6 Jan 2012

About the Port Botany expansion project:

The Sydney Ports Corporation is expanding its container port facilities at Port Botany to augment long-term trade growth. Involving the reclamation of 60 hectares of land, this is the largest port project to be undertaken in Australia in over three decades. The Sydney Ports Corporation mission is to add value to all aspects of Sydney's port operations by managing and developing port facilities and services to meet existing and future trade needs and deliver profitable business growth.

About Orion Integration:

Orion Integration is an industry-leading security systems integration and development concern operating in Australia and the U.S. The company specialises in innovative, cost-effective solutions based on integrated research and development, manufacturing, installation and ongoing support, to provide tailored solutions to its diverse client base.

The challenge:

In order to monitor the progress of this ambitious project, the Sydney Ports Authority needed to deploy a CCTV system that would expand as the project progressed. With cameras positioned at heights of over 25 metres in the marine environment, the wireless infrastructure and cameras would be exposed to extremely harsh climactic conditions. In addition, the fact that the Port Botany expansion is located just 200 metres from a Sydney Airport runway and the entire Port vicinity is subject to unprecedented heavy RF congestion, the license-exempt wireless infrastructure had to be extremely directional and narrow. Coupled with this was the need to overcome obstacles on-the-fly, such as moving shipping containers.

The solution:

Alvarion's cost-effective BreezeNET solution was chosen for the backbone of a native IP network of Point-to-Point links

 

Alvarion's cost-effective BreezeNET solution was chosen for the backbone of a native IP network of Point-to-Point (PTP) links. A series of Pelco and Sanyo 4-megapixel HD Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras are dispersed throughout the site; with each covering a 200 metre range. The multi-vendor cameras transmit 2288x1712 HD video over a single backhaul link at a rate of 20 mbps. This unprecedented resolution allows better monitoring and greater detail, supported by up to x10 optical magnification.

Because of the higher bandwidth, HD video can be transmitted live and does not need to be stored and processed at each camera site. This is an important operational advantage given the difficulty of maintaining dispersed hard disks that are exposed to harsh weather conditions.

A centrally-managed hard disk system not only reduces costs; it improves the integrity of the data. Orion also installed local recording for additional redundancy. Alvarion's robust PTP wireless link ensures that obstacles are easily overcome, such as shipping containers being transported and moved throughout the site. Supported by the wide reach of the Pan/Tilt/Zoon cameras, a series of ad hoc PTP links can be simply deployed throughout the dynamic, constantly-changing site whenever needed.

The result:

Alvarion's BreezeNET B100 solution is enabling cost-effective progress and gradual upgrade of proprietary sections of the existing network. This ensures that the entire Sydney Port complex will be equipped with a very high-definition wireless NVR system that is expandable and ready for ongoing security and access control long after the Botany Port expansion project is completed.