The threat of terror has caused airports to devote a great deal of attention to their security systems. It is a major challenge to monitor airports effectively due to the sheer amount of area to cover. Runways are typically several kilometers in length, making them particularly difficult to monitor. Usually, a basic perimeter fence is used to prevent intrusion.

System Requirements
For this modern airport, a perimeter fence was already installed for a runway that was about 3 km long. However, several recent intrusions made it clear that a better solution was required. The plan was to integrate a proactive alarm along the fence. A local control box would be placed every 100 meters to detect motion or vibration. The control box would trigger a local alarm as well as notify the control room. A video surveillance system would also be integrated at each site, so network bandwidth would be a critical issue.

• I/O controller should provide simple local control capability
• I/O controller should require little or no programming
• I/O controller should send alarm messages with time stamp
• Ethernet bandwidth should be used as efficiently as possible

Project Implementation

• ioLogik E2210: Active Ethernet I/O server with 12 digital inputs, 8 digital outputs
• VPort 351: 1-channel industrial video encoder supporting full motion MPEG4/MJPEG

System Diagram

System Description
Bandwidth usage and real-time response were the critical factors for this security system. 30 control boxes were spread out every 100 meters along the runway. An ioLogik E2210 I/O server and a VPort 351 video server were installed in each control box.

A large amount of bandwidth was required in order to achieve high quality streaming video for surveillance purposes. Achieving a real-time response from the remote I/O devices would be very difficult within the bandwidth limits if a polling architecture was used. The ioLogik E2210 was selected because it could report I/O status based on event triggers, eliminating the need for polling. The ioLogik E2210's built-in real-time clock also enabled it to provide a time stamp for each alarm message.

Furthermore, the ioLogik E2210's Click&Go interface made it very easy to configure local control. The control box's vibration sensor was easily set up to trigger a local buzzer and send a message to the control room. Using a digital output connection, the ioLogik could also trigger the video server to change direction and begin recording video.

Why Moxa

• Real-time stamp for alarm messages
• Low bandwidth usage with proactive alarm messaging
• Local device control with Click&Go logic

Conclusion

Moxa offers creative solutions for industrial applications. Traditionally, software development is required in order to poll for I/O device status. When bandwidth is limited, it becomes difficult to develop the polling architecture. With Active Ethernet I/O, Moxa brings you a new vision of remote I/O, where device status is reported proactively. This new architecture not only reduces the use of bandwidth and CPU resources, but also enables real-time status messages.