Smart video surveillance system ensuring privacy

TLDR: In this paper, the authors describe a video surveillance system which is composed of three key components 1-smart camera, 2-server, 3-client, connected through IP-networks in wired or wireless configurations.

Abstract: This invention describes a video surveillance system which is composed of three key components 1-smart camera(s), 2-server(s), 3-client(s), connected through IP-networks in wired or wireless configurations. The system has been designed so as to protect the privacy of people and goods under surveillance. Smart cameras are based on JPEG 2000 compression where an analysis module allows for efficient use of security tools for the purpose of scrambling, and event detection. The analysis is also used in order to provide a better quality in regions of the interest in the scene. Compressed video streams leaving the camera(s) are scrambled and signed for the purpose of privacy and data integrity verification using JPSEC compliant methods. The same bit stream is also protected based on JPWL compliant methods for robustness to transmission errors. The operations of the smart camera are optimized in order to provide the best compromise in terms of perceived visual quality of the decoded video, versus the amount of power consumption. The smart camera(s) can be wireless in both power and communication connections. The server(s) receive(s), store(s), manage(s) and dispatch(es) the video sequences on wired and wireless channels to a variety of clients and users with different device capabilities, channel characteristics and preferences. Use of seamless scalable coding of video sequences prevents any need for transcoding operations at any point in the system.