Covert audio-video systems for authorised national-security measures
Sisteme și echipamente inovative pentru punerea în aplicare a măsurilor autorizate din mandatele de securitate națională
A concealable audio-video capture and transmission system delivered at TRL8 to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, with autonomous power management, encrypted storage and secure 4G/5G streaming.
Record
Detail
Development and validation, over 24 months, of a concealable hardware and software solution for collecting, monitoring and securely transmitting real-time audio and video, for use in implementing measures authorised under national security mandates. The finished prototype was transferred to the beneficiary free of charge.
What the system does
Audio and video generated by devices small enough to be concealed in clothing is transmitted over wireless links to a dedicated server for storage, indexing and retransmission. The architecture covers content generators, secure communication, reception and storage, information processing and remote control, with a user hierarchy and access authorisation to sensitive data following Bell-LaPadula rules, non-repudiation, encrypted storage and certified timestamping.
Stages
2024 — concept and architecture. A study of suitable technologies, the system concept, and the hardware/software architecture for the modular capture and transmission system. Data capture interfaces, secure communication over SRT, encrypted storage and remote control mechanisms were designed, along with preliminary PCB schematics and a complete testing programme.
2025 — platform evaluation and software stack. Six hardware platforms were developed and validated — Raspberry Pi 4B, Pi 5, Pi Zero 2W, Orange Pi 3B, RockChip RV1126 and RV1106 — each under 168+ hours of continuous testing. The software stack comprises SRT with forward error correction, a MediaMTX server, FFmpeg pipelines, adaptive bitrate streaming from 240p to 1080p, a DVR system and a C# .NET management agent. Six 4G/LTE modems were evaluated. The RV1106 proved exceptionally energy-efficient at 1.6 W while streaming, and SRT outperformed RTSP and RTMP under unstable network conditions.
2026 — delivery. Assembly, testing and validation of the integrated system, user training, and handover of the TRL8 prototype to the beneficiary under a loan-for-use agreement.
Dissemination
- Mobile Video Surveillance Solution and Power Consumption Analysis — Electronics 15(5), MDPI
- Development of a Modular Covert Audio-Video Surveillance System — ISPEC 2025, Kyrenia
- Performance Evaluation of Selected Raspberry Pi Platforms — BILTEK 2025, Paris
- Workshops at Politehnica University of Timișoara in December 2024, December 2025 and June 2026