Throughout its current period of prosperity, Sharjah has taken the protection of its affluent city centre and residents very seriously. Since 2002, it has entrusted the installation, expansion and maintenance of the city's comprehensive CCTV system to advanced security engineering.

Since the system's inception, a rolling programme of development, designed to meet the city's rapid growth and expansion programme has evolved. Eager to use the latest technologies to provide its control room with the best available surveillance images, the most recent development has included the installation of Network Video Technologies (NVT) unshielded twisted pair (UTP) transmission technology.

"We have installed 50 cameras fitted with high-powered lenses that can survey the city from high-rise rooftop locations. Used mainly for traffic surveillance and flow monitoring purposes, these specialist cameras produce very high-resolution images. The images are then wirelessly transmitted in broadcast quality to a central receiver point. In order to preserve their high quality, we utilised NVT UTP transmission technology and a 500 metre Cat5e cable bundle to transmit crystal-clear camera video from the receiver point back to the control room" said Michael Pederson, Advanced Security Engineering.

Using NVT UTP video transmission technology not only assured the quality of images required, providing a standard of picture comparable with fibre at a fraction of the cost but was also much quicker and easier to install, due to the compact nature of Cat5e cabling. This resulted in less cable being required for installation and quicker termination time versus cumbersome coax or fibre alternatives. Advanced Security Engineering technicians also included spare UTP pairs in the cable bundle, allowing for easy and instant connectivity of additional cameras in the future if required, to stay apace with the rapidly expanding city's development.