IndigoVision

The Munich airport is using IP video technology from IndigoVision to upgrade security at staff access points, terminals, parking areas.

Hoboken, N.J. – IndigoVision’s advanced IP Video system has been installed at Munich Airport as part of recent security enhancements. Munich is one of Europe’s fastest growing airports with nearly 30m passengers expected through its two terminals in 2006.

In accordance with new European Union regulations requiring that all airport employees undergo the same security checks as passengers when entering the secure airside area, Munich Airport undertook a security reconfiguration of its staff access points. This included scanners, security arches and CCTV surveillance, for which Munich airport chose IndigoVision’s IP Video technology. The main reason for choosing IndigoVision’s solution was the ability to deliver high quality 4 CIF 25 fps digital video with minimum impact on the network bandwidth.

The new security measures were installed in both Terminals by IPPI GmbH, IndigoVision’s local approved integrator. The furthest camera was located approximately 1.5 miles from the central control room, the main monitoring point for the airport’s entire 1800 camera CCTV system and the new IP Video solution. The system was interfaced to both the existing digital MJPEG system in Terminal Two and the analog matrix system in Terminal One. This allowed users of the existing CCTV systems to have access to the images from the new secure access areas.

IndigoVision’s CEO, Oliver Vellacott said, “IP Video was an ideal choice for this application as it provided high-quality MPEG-4 CCTV images from cameras located over a large area of the airport and a flexible interface path to the existing hybrid mix of CCTV systems. Extending the existing systems would have been far more expensive and would not provide the same level of scalability for the future.”

In addition, the existing analog cameras in the parking areas were connected to the new networked system to improve the overall level of security for those areas. A local monitoring system was established for the parking area using IndigoVision’s ‘Control Center’ enterprise video and alarm management software and a Networked Video Recorder (NVR). Advanced motion detection was installed in the parking area ensuring critical events were alerted and recorded. ‘Control Center’ is a highly scaleable application which allows local and remote control of any CCTV system, from an entry-level system with a small number of cameras, to a large installation with several thousand cameras. In conjunction with IndigoVision's compression and transmission technology and NVRs, ‘Control Center’ provides a complete integrated end-to-end solution for digital CCTV.

In total the IP Video network accommodates 43 cameras for the new access areas and 23 existing cameras from the parking areas. The cameras are a mix of fixed and dome cameras and are connected to the network via IndigoVision’s stand-alone and rack mounted transmitter/receiver units. These units convert the camera signal to DVD quality, high-resolution digital video, for transmission over the airport’s existing LAN. IndigoVision’s advanced compression technology ensures that the CCTV images are indistinguishable from analog while minimizing bandwidth on the LAN. The transmitter/receiver units were also used to convert the network video back to analog for local displays at the screening points and for interfacing to the existing analog CCTV infrastructure.