Rajant Corporation, the exclusive manufacturer of Kinetic Mesh® networks, has provided a detailed technology briefing on the success of recent high-profile public safety projects for the United Kingdom monarchy. Rajant’s role in the royal weddings was shared with technical teams from the Police community in December 2018.
Rajant worked alongside Thames Valley Police to boost the already significant public safety and security arrangements at the weddings of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle and Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank in Windsor last year. Together, the entities were responsible for providing additional video surveillance coverage, which included deploying the Rajant wireless infrastructure, for secure and stable CCTV.
The briefings at the conference described how the additional surveillance was required to cover the hundreds of thousands of visitors and guests in Windsor during both weddings to catch a glimpse of the royal couples. The whole area was securely monitored with footage made available at multiple surveillance points and delivered in real-time in high-definition. This comprehensive security was deployed with maximum efficiency thanks to Rajant’s Kinetic Mesh® network in key points where network fibre infrastructure, for the essential additional cameras, was unavailable.
A member of the Thames Valley Police team stated, “Our brief was to provide supplementary CCTV coverage for the Royal Weddings. It became quite apparent during the design process that using conventional point to point/multipoint would not suffice in the urban environment of Windsor. A true mesh network would better provide the resilience and coverage we required. Rajant was identified as a supplier of mesh networking equipment, available in both the police and licence-exempt frequencies, with ease of deployment making Rajant’s mesh network a superior solution.”
“For both high-profile events, Windsor saw a significant increase of well-wishers coming into the town to watch the carriage rides. Delivering additional CCTV systems, which could then be monitored by police and security services, was a top priority. Given the route for the post-wedding processions by the royal couples was through the winding streets of Windsor and up through Windsor Castle’s Long Walk, Thames Valley Police decided to enhance the existing extensive CCTV coverage with dynamically deployed supplementary cameras.,” said Chris Mason, Director of Sales for EMEA at Rajant. “The Operational team put a project in place to rapidly deploy a solution which, when combined with the existing capabilities, could comprehensively monitor each day’s route to ensure public safety.”
The Kinetic Mesh® technology seamlessly integrated with existing communications infrastructure at key locations. This enabled large amounts of mission-critical video data to be delivered with high throughput and low latency across the network, giving the police the visibility they needed. According to Thames Police, “The imagery provided over the Rajant network was several seconds ahead of the television broadcasters covering the event and met the expectations of our users.”
Rajant worked alongside the Thames Valley Police to deliver the project in just three days. Deploying 11 cameras with 13 of Rajant’s BreadCrumb® nodes, delivery of fast, stable and high-definition CCTV was achieved. The network utilised multiple high-bandwidth frequencies, ensuring that the massive amount of wireless output from broadcasters, other security organisations, and the general public did not prevent transmission of the key imagery.
Mason added: “Rajant’s focus is to ensure public safety requirements are provided quickly and securely for authorities, and these two projects were no different. Rajant is developing its portfolio of Kinetic Mesh technologies to address the requirements for enhanced public safety and security by enabling organisations such as Thames Valley Police, to deploy networks extremely quickly in response to planned or unplanned events. Showcasing these deployments for the first time at the Police Conference was a great privilege. We highlighted the key capabilities of our technology as well as illustrating how events of this scale can have rapidly deployed, secure, reliable communications. We are pleased to have played a part in making both wedding days enjoyable, but most importantly safe for all involved.”