Even trusty old PSTN (POTS) is not immune from network failure and is definitely prone to line cut attacks. With this in mind, many consumers refuse to rely 100% on a single transmission path and insist on a secondary backup path for their Alarm Monitoring service.
IP Alarms offer a range of SMS, GSM & GPRS cellular alarm communication devices for cell only and dual-path signalling applications.
Encrypted GPRS
Sometimes a DSL or cable internet connection is simply not possible and this is where our GPRS products come into their own.
The 804G Wavecom modem transports AES encrypted alarm signals to the server in 2-5 seconds. A five minute supervision interval is possible on a 1 mByte per Month data plan.
CellAlarm Range of GSM Alarm Communicators
The CellAlarm boards have been under development since early 2008 and the excitement at IP Alarms is based around having the new found ability to seamlessly change alarm transmission paths to a cellular GPRS network in the event that the IP network fails - all from a single device.
Prototypes are scheduled for September 2009 and hopefully we will be in production by the 4th quarter 2009. Please feel free to contact us if you are a manufacturing company and would like to investigate embedding our signalling technology into your products.
The SMS devices will be suitable for use in all countries with dual or quad band coverage and are expected to be most popular in the UK and North America where SMS delivery is generally quite fast.
The GSM Voice version will be targeted mainly at the medical monitoring market where there has been a reluctance to accept IP based signalling.
The two main markets for GPRS are the UK and Australia. Although both markets are heavily regulated and very competitive, there is plenty of room for new products as GPRS monitoring is still in its infancy. IP Alarms will compete more on flexibility and ease of use and target the non-regulated sections of the market with attractive low cost supervision plans. The ability for our products to use a SIM from any network provider and the fact that we do not charge extra for superviaion will position us well.
Overview of Cellular Alarm Monitoring
In today's high tech world, almost everybody owns a mobile phone. The perception is that GSM networks are very reliable and rarely suffer from network outages. This makes GSM a viable platform for alarm communications and three different technologies can be employed for signal transmission - SMS, Voice and Data.
The reliability of SMS varies greatly from country to country and delays in message delivery rule it out from being considered a serious option in countries where messages can often be delayed for many hours. In countries that do not experience such delays, SMS can be a good low cost method of alarm communication, however, it is often not popular with alarm monitoring companies as it opens up the possibility of self monitoring where messages can be sent directly to the end users mobile phone.
The use of a GSM Dialer/Communicator allows an alarm panel modem to dial out and make a phone call to the Monitoring Centre over the GSM network. When a conventional analogue alarm receiver answers the call, an audio/voice channel is opened up and the alarm panel can communicate with the receiver just as it would over a PSTN line. This technology benefits from being alarm protocol independent and industry experts claim a transmission success rate of somewhere between 80% and 100%. Both SMS and Voice benefit from low equipment costs and low network rates.
GPRS Wireless Networks
The use of a GPRS data plan overcomes this problem and allows constant supervision of the connection between the protected premises and the Monitoring Centre. A GPRS device uses the GSM network to achieve an "always on" wireless connection to the Internet. Once connected, it can communicate using Internet Protocols (IP) just like any other Internet enabled device. This allows the sending of regular heartbeats to the monitoring server so that any equipment failure, sabotage or loss of network can be detected within seconds.
GPRS devices do not support audio/voice communications, so any alarm signals using standard protocols such as Ademco Contact ID or Fast Format have to be converted from analogue to digital within the device itself. This is referred to as Dialer Capture. GPRS enabled devices are more expensive than SMS and Voice devices and the cost of data plans vary widely from country to country. Asian countries tend to have very reasonable rates whereas rates in North America are very restrictive.
Summary
The cost and availability of the various networks, existing equipment and infrastructure, insurance requirements and other concerns may ultimately determine which cellular products and solutions you chose.