The Story
As the largest neighboring community to the Umatilla Chemical Depot, the City of Hermiston’s police department has an important role in protecting the public in the event of a chemical incident.  Over the past five years, Hermiston PD has been a recognized international leader in the innovative use of technology in law enforcement and public safety. 

The Challenge
As a part of preparedness for a chemical incident there are dozens of streaming IP cameras in Hermiston and the surrounding area that provide emergency personnel with extra “eyes in the field”  to better make decisions about how to use their resources more effectively.  IP cameras require a significant amount of bandwidth to operate properly and as the system has grown, so have the requirements for capacity.  To address the issue of capacity and redundancy it was decided that a point-to-point wireless link would be installed between the Hermiston Police Department and a central aggregation point for the IP video data.  This link would take some of the load off of the existing wired connections as well as provide a redundant path.  The problem was that there was a very large willow tree that totally obstructs the path between the Police Department and the data aggregation point.

The Solution
To overcome the non-line-of-sight nature of the path in question, ezWireless selected the Motorola PTP400 radio operating in the licensed 4.9 GHz Public Safety Band.  With the link now in place, the Hermiston Police Department has an extra 17 Mbps of throughput for camera traffic and other data with out the need to pay for an additional leased line.