In what seems to be an increasingly chaotic world of terrorism and crime, the video surveillance market has been on the upswing. More cameras are getting installed in parking lots, city streets and airports. And existing cameras are getting upgraded to digital capabilities.
The move from analog to digital got a boost in the post-September 11 world, as governments, airports and businesses sought a better way to collect and store video data. In the analog world, video images were stored on VHS tapes, which had to be changed a few times a day and stored somewhere. But users of video surveillance equipment are learning that digital storage requires less physical space and can even filter out hours of footage in which nothing happens. "We believe very strongly that the security and surveillance market is converting from analog to digital," says Arthur Chang, president and CEO of
Cradle Technologies, which offers a programmable multicore DSP for surveillance applications.
This switch to digital amounts to a miniboom for the semiconductor industry, which has won its place in the next generation of video surveillance and security in the form of converters, digital-signal processors, sensors and other chips. Senior analyst Brian O'Rourke, of InStat (a division of EB's parent company), estimates that somewhat more than 15 million video security cameras will ship in 2005, compared to about 10 million in 2001. Not surprisingly, there was a significant jump in demand for security cameras in 2002, and growth in this area will continue at a modest rate of about 10 percent per year, he says.
But although some might expect that boom to show up primarily in the image sensor market, many observers are looking for the bigger growth to be higher up the chain—in converters and DSPs. That's because those who already have security cameras installed aren't ripping them out just to add in digital sensors. Rather, they are employing a different system infrastructure that converts the analog images to digital signals. "The bigger opportunity is in the conversion of these systems from analog to digital," says Chang. "We are seeing that happen very fast, because you don't have to disrupt the structure of an entire camera network."
"By combining analog-to-digital conversion with some sort of video processing, you can now start to do motion detection and object-separation."
—Artie Chang, CEO, Cradle TechnologiesCustomers can leave the analog cameras already in place and still get the advantages of a digital system, such as more-efficient storage and less network traffic. They can send analog inputs to a digital video server that incorporates a DSP and a converter. The data is compressed, data analysis is performed and then the digital information can be streamed over an IP network, according to Yvonne Cager, video security marketing manager at
Texas Instruments (ti). It also means a boost for companies that sell analog-to-digital converters, such as
Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) and TI, and those that sell DSPs, such as ADI, TI and Cradle.
For new installations, customers are taking one of two approaches, Cager says. Some are putting the converter or codec into the camera itself but not switching out the analog sensor, a strategy that lets them stream data directly to the IP network without first going through a server but allows them to stick with the analog sensor. And a few customers are going for an end-to-end digital system, starting with the imaging sensor.
And companies are already working to add to the functionality available in digital video systems. "By combining analog-to-digital conversion with some sort of video processing, you can now start to do motion detection and object-separation detection," says Chang. For example, if someone abandons a bag at an airport, the video data can run against an algorithm that recognizes that event and sends an alarm to the appropriate security personnel. "The desire to do these things has always been there, but in an analog world, they are not so easy to do."
Cradle recently recorded a big customer win with KT, formerly Korea Telecom. Using Cradle's hardware technology, the company plans to offer sophisticated security services the same way it offers other telecommunications services—that is, for a monthly fee. KT will install video cameras and hook them up to the customer's DSL, providing for easy monitoring from anywhere.
But many of the high-end applications such as face recognition are still several years off. Accenture Technology Labs, the research-and-development arm of consulting firm Accenture, is working on future applications, incorporating multiple video cameras, infrared sensors that detect employee badges, and a fingerprint reader.
"It's a huge amount of information," says researcher Valery Petrushin, who runs the project. How to display it and find rare events is part of the problem." Petrushin doesn't believe that such a system can ever be entirely automated. "Even in 10 years, we will still need a person in the loop."
