Abstract :
A system has been developed to permit on-board vehicular surveillance by means of a closed-circuit TV, camera working with an FM two-way radio. This system has been installed on an AIRTRANS vehicle at the Dallas/ Ft. Worth airport in the fall of 1979. A snapshot is derived from the closed-circuit camera, to be transmitted in 3 seconds over a standard business or public safety channel. The pictures are composed of 16,384 picture elements (pixels), arranged as 128 lines, with 128 elements per line. The desirability of video surveillance is discussed, along with recent trends in electronics and communications that have helped to make it practical. An examination is then made into the general problem of sending visual information over narrowband FM radio, followed by a closer look at the specific bandwidth/resolution/time trade-offs that were made in the AIRTRANS system design.
