Seoul City Expands Innovative “U-City” Wireless Network with New Firetide MIMO-based Video Surveillance for Children Safety Zones

LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--To help prevent child kidnappings and locate missing children, Seoul City commissioned NongShim NDS, one of the country’s largest system integrators, to expand upon its ambitious “Seoul U-City” plan and provide children safety zones using Firetide Inc.’s MIMO-based wireless infrastructure mesh network. Real-time video surveillance combined with location based tracking devices given to children help to locate them via the wireless network if they are lost or abducted.

“Seoul’s approach demonstrates how ubiquitous networking can enhance a municipality’s ability to protect the community and provide innovative services.”

The video surveillance network of children safety zones in Seoul represent the fourth and fifth phases of an ambitious plan by the city to create a city-wide, ubiquitous wireless sensor network. Known as “Seoul U-City,” the wireless network is providing digital services to residents, tourists, city employees and businesses. So far Firetide’s wireless infrastructure mesh equipment has been deployed in Seoul to provide critical, city-wide public and private infrastructure supporting multiple applications from public safety, to Wi-Fi access to municipal department connectivity.

“Since we began the ‘Seoul U-City’ initiative in 2007, we have been able to deploy exciting applications and services that we did not foresee. The wireless network is allowing us to more easily provide valuable public and private services, enhancing the well-being of our community,” said Kim, Jeong Hyun, Project Manager of Seoul City Hall.

The main goal of the new phase is to provide video surveillance with motion tracking capabilities in select neighborhoods to help located missing children. Kiosk-based video conferencing systems have also been deployed on the network for emergencies, allowing individuals to make emergency calls to Seoul’s Disaster Prevention Center (DPC). With this system, the DPC can view incidents in real-time and respond quickly.

For the safety zones surveillance network, NDS chose new high performing MIMO 802.11n-based HotPort® 7200 units from Firetide because of their unique capacity to backhaul concentrated video traffic from 30 IP video surveillance cameras networked by Firetide’s HotPort® 6202 nodes. The addition of high-capacity MIMO mesh nodes eliminated the need for 3^rd party backhaul and created a seamless network that is easier to manage and is more cost effective.

“The Firetide MIMO solution was critical for the safety zones because there is no other wireless mesh product that would allow us to transport such bandwidth intensive video feeds,” said Daniel Park, General Manager of NongShim NDS. “With its groundbreaking performance and capacity, Firetide’s MIMO solution is enabling Seoul to expand and build a city-wide infrastructure on a large scale.”

A location based system (LBS) was deployed on the network using sensor nodes, gateways and RF tags. Parents can opt to have their children wear the RF necklaces that communicate to the sensor nodes so that teachers or their parents know where they are at any time. This is the same LBS solution that is being used in the wireless network in Seoul Forest Park wireless – Seoul’s equivalent of New York City’s Central Park – that also provides other digital services including media services, free public Internet access and ecological monitoring enabled by Firetide.

“With the new MIMO-based solution, Firetide is helping the city of Seoul realize its goal of a city-wide wireless infrastructure for its citizens and visitors,” said Bo Larsson, chief executive officer of Firetide. “Seoul’s approach demonstrates how ubiquitous networking can enhance a municipality’s ability to protect the community and provide innovative services.”

In a separate project in Seoul City, Firetide also announced last November that Korea Telecom is deploying the world’s first real-time, mobile wireless video surveillance system for their subway system using Firetide equipment at an estimated total cost of $60 million.

About Firetide Inc.

Firetide is the leading provider of wireless infrastructure mesh networks that enable concurrent video, voice, and data for municipal, public safety, and industrial applications. Firetide provides reliable high performance wireless infrastructure mesh and access solutions for video surveillance, Internet access, public safety networks and temporary networks wherever rapid deployment, mobility and ease of installation are required. Headquartered in Los Gatos, Calif., Firetide is a privately held company with worldwide product distribution. http://www.firetide.com