Straight to the Point - Article in GIT Security

Being able to quickly and accurately locate intrusion is a critical part of any good security system; the sooner an intruder is located, the faster the situation can be verified and the appropriate action taken, minimising disruption. Most security sensors narrow down the location of an intruder by creating detection zones which work in conjunction with camera pre-sets to help security teams visually verify the event and, to a certain extent, track intruders.

But in certain applications, being able to know exactly where the point of intrusion is allows a far quicker visual verification process, decreasing the risk of losing the target and increasing the chance of stopping intruders before any damage is done.

What is point location and which technologies offer this level of precise detection?

Point location or point detection technologies enable security staff to know, in real time, exactly where a breach is taking place, which in turn makes the visual verification process significantly quicker as cameras can look precisely to the point where the intruder is, and then track them throughout the protected area.

Several technologies allow point location of an intrusion. One of the most effective is LiDAR, which enable the exact coordinates of intruders to be determined. LiDAR sensors typically work by 'Time of Flight'. When a sensor emits pulsed light waves into the surrounding environment, these pulses bounce off surrounding objects and return to the sensor. The sensor uses the time it took for each pulse to return to the sensor to calculate the distance it travelled. Optex Redscan Pro is an award-winning long-range LiDAR which can be mounted vertically or horizontally to protect large areas pinpointing the X&Y coordinates of the intruder and allowing tracking in real-time.

Some fibre optic sensors can also pinpoint an intrusion to a couple of metres of precision within a several kilometre perimeter. Distributed Acoustic Sensor (DAS) technology, for example, can convert a single mode fibre into thousands of extremely sensitive acoustic and vibration sensors. The most common installation would be on a fence to detect any breach by intruders, either climbing over it or cutting through it, but it can also be buried. One of the latest available solutions, Fiber SenSys EchoPoint series, can pinpoint an intrusion down to +-6 metres, even on a fence that is several kilometres long and can identify different types of breach, whether it is an attempt to climb the fence, cut through it or, when buried, whether its walking or machine digging.