Surveillance Video Router

• US 20120098969A1
• Filed: 01/04/2011
• Published: 04/26/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Wengrovitz, Michael S., Barber, Brian A.
• Granted Patent: US 8,928,756 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/159
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/181 for receiving images from a plurality of remote sources
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/185 from a mobile camera, e.g. for remote control

Abstract

A surveillance video router routes digital video streams to video receiving devices. The surveillance video router is coupled to a packet-switched network to enable communication with the video receiving devices and to receive respective digital video streams captured by remote surveillance cameras. The surveillance video router receives a request to route a first digital video stream generated by a first remote surveillance camera to a first video receiving device and then routes the first digital video stream to the first video receiving device via the packet-switched network.

Claims

1. A surveillance video router for routing digital video streams to video receiving devices, comprising:

a network interface coupled to a packet-switched network to enable communication with the video receiving devices and to receive respective digital video streams captured by remote surveillance cameras; and

a processor for receiving a request to route a first digital video stream generated by a first remote surveillance camera to a first video receiving device via the network interface, the processor further for routing the first digital video stream to the first video receiving device via the network interface.

2. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the request is received from the first video receiving device.

3. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the request is received as a control input from a third party source.

4. The surveillance video router of claim 1, further comprising:

a plurality of logical source ports, each for receiving one of the digital video streams; and

a plurality of logical destination ports, each for communicating with at least one of the video receiving devices;

wherein the processor copies the first digital video stream from a respective one of the logical source ports for the first digital video stream to a respective one of the logical destination ports for the first video receiving device to route the first digital video stream to the first video receiving device.

5. The surveillance video router of claim 4, wherein the processor receives a Session Setup Signaling Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request at the logical destination port for the first video receiving device and routes the first digital video stream to the first video receiving device within an HTTP response.

6. The surveillance video router of claim 5, wherein the HTTP response includes Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) over Real Time Protocol (RTP) packets or a series of Motion Joint Photographic Experts Group (MJPEG) frames.

7. The surveillance video router of claim 4, wherein the processor initiates a video session with the first remote surveillance camera by issuing a Session Setup Signaling HTTP request from an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the surveillance video router and the logical source port of the first remote surveillance camera, and receives the first digital video stream from the first remote surveillance camera within an HTTP response, the processor initiating the video session prior to or upon receiving the request to route the first digital video stream to the first video receiving device.

8. The surveillance video router of claim 4, wherein the processor further receives an additional request to route the first digital video stream to an additional video receiving device via the network interface.

9. The surveillance video router of claim 8, wherein the first video receiving device and the additional video receiving device are each coupled to the same logical destination port.

10. The surveillance video router of claim 8, wherein the processor further copies the first digital video stream from the respective one of the logical source ports to an additional respective one of the logical destination ports for the additional video receiving device to route the first digital video stream to the additional video receiving device

11. The surveillance video router of claim 10, wherein the processor further transcodes the first digital video stream to produce a transcoded digital video stream and routes the transcoded digital video stream to the additional video receiving device.

12. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the processor further processes the first digital video stream to produce a processed digital video stream and routes the processed digital video stream to the first video receiving device.

13. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the network interface includes at least one first network interface card for communicating with the remote surveillance cameras via at least one first packet-switched network and at least one second network interface card for communicating with the video receiving devices via at least one second packet-switched network.

14. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the processor further routes the first digital video stream together with other digital video streams to the first video receiving device in an Internet Protocol (IP) tunnel.

15. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the first video receiving device includes a display device, a video management system, a video analytic system, a video recorder or an additional surveillance video router.

16. The surveillance video router of claim 1, wherein the processor further receives the request to route a first digital video stream generated by a first remote surveillance camera in a first signaling format and transmits an additional request to receive the first digital video stream to the first remote surveillance camera in a second signaling format different from the first signaling format.

17. A method for routing digital video streams captured by remote surveillance cameras to video receiving devices, comprising:

receiving a request to route a first digital video stream generated by a first remote surveillance camera to a first video receiving device at a surveillance video router via a packet-switched network;

receiving the first digital video stream from the first remote surveillance camera at the surveillance video router via the packet-switched network; and

routing the first digital video stream to the first video receiving device by the surveillance video router.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the request is received from the first video receiving device or as a control input from a third party source.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein the routing further comprises:

copying the first digital video stream from a respective one of a plurality of logical source ports on the surveillance video router to at least one of a plurality of logical destination ports on the surveillance video router to route the first digital video stream to at least the first video receiving device.

20. The method of claim 17, wherein the routing further comprises:

routing the first digital video stream together with other digital video streams to the first video receiving device in an Internet Protocol (IP) tunnel.