Police vehicles carry cameras facing forward, backward and inside the car, and many also run licence plate recognition, face detection or driver fatigue monitoring. All of that footage is recorded on board. It becomes evidence only once it reaches the force’s central storage, and getting it there quickly and securely is a daily operational problem.
How much video a police vehicle records
Five cameras recording at 2 Mbps for a six-hour shift produce around 27 GB per vehicle. Across a fleet, that is terabytes every day, and onboard storage fills quickly if it is not cleared between shifts. The figure for any vehicle is cameras × bitrate in Mbps × hours × 3,600 ÷ 8,000, in gigabytes.
The real constraint is time at the station
Vehicles often stop at the station for less than 10 minutes between shifts. Legacy offload systems were not built for that: when five vehicles offload at once, each can need more than 30 minutes. Footage that does not upload in time stays in the car, which risks overwritten recordings and delays to investigations.
Security and compliance
Evidential footage has to be protected from the moment it leaves the vehicle. Many governments require encrypted transfer. A private wireless network keeps the footage on infrastructure the force owns, rather than on a public mobile network.
- AES-128 on the wireless link and AES-256 end to end
- Client and neighbour MAC access control
- Central monitoring of transfers and of the network through Anywhere Node Manager
How the station network is designed
- Fixed nodes with 120° sector antennas cover the parking areas, typically within about 500 m
- Each vehicle carries a compact, low-power mobile node with an omni antenna, PoE powered and rated IP67
- Offload starts automatically when a vehicle arrives, with no action from the officer
- Traffic is balanced across paths when several vehicles arrive together
- Capacity is planned for the peaks, because vehicles rarely return evenly through the day
- Hardware is rated for outdoor heat, up to 65°C on the AX52e
Sizing the network
Start with the busiest hour. As an example, 20 vehicles each holding 27 GB and returning within one hour need about 1.2 Gbps of combined capacity, which is why stations use several fixed nodes and drop-off points rather than a single access point. The stop time sets the per-vehicle rate: moving 27 GB within 10 minutes needs about 360 Mbps.
Why not 4G, 5G or depot Wi-Fi
Cellular upload charges for every gigabyte, depends on coverage at the station, and is weakest in the upload direction that video needs. Standard Wi-Fi slows down when many vehicles connect at once, because they share the same access points and channels. A private wireless network built for offload avoids both problems and has no per-gigabyte charges.
In service
A police force in the Middle East uses Anywhere nodes to offload video from its vehicles, with each recording around 27 GB per shift from five cameras, short station stops and outdoor temperatures that can reach 65°C.
Questions to ask before you buy
- How much video does each vehicle hold at the end of a shift?
- How long do vehicles actually stop at the station, and how many arrive in the busiest hour?
- What encryption and audit requirements apply to evidential footage?
- How large are the parking areas, and where can fixed nodes be mounted?
- Who will monitor transfers and the network day to day?