White Paper

Connecting it all together – Fiber Optics in Security & Surveillance Solutions
An executive briefing for chief security officers (CSOs), directors and managers on understanding the benefits and ways that fiber optics enhances the operation and business bottom line of your surveillance solutions.

Connecting it all together, Fiber Optics in Security & Surveillance Solutions — An Infinova White Paper

With a transition from analog to digital video surveillance continuing, there remains a crucial requirement for reliable transmission of the video signal during today’s period of co-existence. With many legacy installations, it has been coaxial cable handling images from a camera to monitoring or recording or both. Coax has its limitations: restricted transmission distance, signal degradation over long cable runs, and interference, to name a few. Networking, digital and Internet Protocol (IP) have ushered in Cat 5/Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable and highspeed Ethernet, employing IP to carry the digitalized video images. In some installations, wireless transmission – radio frequency, microwave, WiFi and mesh nets – play a role. Most enterprise security video designs are not totally wireless. Instead, the technology is applied to meet certain geographic or operational challenges. When to Implement Fiber? And then there is fiber optic cabling with its interference immunity, better inherent security, robust cabling distances and huge bandwidth capability. Figure 1: Is it time to implement fiber optics for security video transmission? There are many advantages over traditional coaxial and IT-centric Cat 5/unshielded twisted pair wiring. As before, we’ll look over the shoulders of CSO Terry Jones and Helena Smith, his second-incommand, who work for a mid-sized enterprise, as they now face the decisions and intricacies involved in selecting fiber optics and better understand its advantages, installation and – most importantly – bottom line business