Smiths Detection Tuesday said it has acquired LiveWave, a small Rhode Island-based company that develops software systems for networking large numbers of sensors and video cameras for remote viewing and recording.
Smiths Detection, a division of Britain's Smiths Group, paid $18 million for LiveWave, which has 11 employees.
LiveWave's software allows for enterprise digital video surveillance solutions linking thousands of cameras, sensors and users securely. Smiths said that this type of networking capability is a core technology for an increasing number of security applications, especially in the mass transit and event security markets.
"This acquisition further enhances the Smiths Detection offering to the security market," Bret Bader, vice president and general manager of Smiths Detection in the Americas, said in a statement. "From X-ray imaging to chemical, biological, and explosive detectors, and networked CCTV, Smiths Detection is better enabled to offer sensor solutions in a single system, with central command and control capability."
Smiths Detection has already done some work in the homeland security sensor networking arena, having teamed with teamed with Michael Stapleton Associates over the summer on linking an X-ray screening system with a two-way communications system for remote bomb detection verification in support of front line security screeners (Defense Daily, July 19).
LiveWave's customers include the Departments of Defense, Energy and Homeland Security, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). For WMATA, LiveWave's technology is used in the PROTECT System, which combines video and chemical agent sensors for early warning and facility management in the Washington, DC Metro subway system. LiveWave's FirstView digital video encoder and server system is also used in the National Counterterrorism Center.
Jefferies & Co. was LiveWave's financial advisor on the deal.
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