SpreadNet Spread Spectrum - still viable?

[CRRC]

The advantage of the old Ademco 5800 format was strong signal propagation and wide availability of sensors from Honeywell as well as the aftermarket (Resolution Products and others). They are UL listed and that listing requires the system to be able to detect and report outside jamming attempts. While it is theoretically possible to jam a sensor the attempt would be detected by the system and can act on it accordingly. Finally, a good installation would also layer in hardwired sensors so even if a wireless sensor were to be successfully jammed and entry made another (hardwired) sensor would detect the intruder.
 
That said, if "spread spectrum" capability is an important consideration for you, perhaps you should consider an Elk M1 system (Gold or EZ8) with Elk's "Two-Way Wireless" sensors. Aside from the obvious features of frequency hopping, encryption and 2-way transmission acknowledgement, the fact that it is proprietary to a relatively small vendor means it's less likely that the technical details have been flushed out by hackers and compromised.
 
Per the Elk website:
 
In addition to encrypting the signal transmissions, ELK utilizes frequency-hopping across a broad spectrum in the 900 MHz band. The system automatically scans and hops across 25 frequency channels, making it "virtually impossible" for intruders to lock onto the signal and thereby hack the system.

 

[JNA]

CRRC, thanks for providing the information on the ELK two way wireless, that communications scheme is exactly what I would want. The only problem is that ELK do not appear to have an image sensor in their current line up, but I've posted a separate thread asking about that. Thanks also for the explanation on the 5800 series jamming detection but the following is why this is no longer good enough.
 
If you live in a police jurisdiction that requires alarm verification then jamming detection in a fixed frequency wireless system (or actually tamper or jamming detection in any system) is of little to no use. The alarm system may detect the jamming and report it to the central monitoring station, who then dutifully report it to the police, who then do precisely nothing because it is an unverified alarm, i.e. there is no visual or audio confirmation or a burglary attempt. Even if you had full video surveillance it wouldn't necessarily help because at this stage the burglar might not even be in visible range of the property and even if they were they wouldn't necessarily be confirmed as a potential burglar at this stage.
 
Thus the first priority of a wireless alarm system should be to mitigate or eliminate the threat of jamming. Encryption alone on a fixed frequency system doesn't do this. The encryption will stop the ability to actually interpret the signals and spoof them but it does not prevent jamming. The fixed frequency also makes it easy to detect the presence of the alarm system in order to attempt jamming. Spread spectrum, especially frequency hopping spread spectrum, enables a more powerful transmission to mitigate reflection issues and fade but because it uses spread spectrum it can operate within the wireless noise floor making it undetectable.

 

[Del91574]

Jam detection is not reported to the police. It will be reported to the end user, especially if ECV is mandated in your locale.
 
Can't help you with the requirement for verification, however most locales also have a clause that covers multiple sensor trips from different detectors or trips that indicate a direction of travel (such as perimeter followed by interior alarms) generally are viewed by the locales as a verified alarm in lieu of audio or video.

 

[JNA]

Thanks for clarification on jamming not being reported.
 
Unfortunately San Jose isn't one of the locales you describe. They might decide to let a local mobile police unit know that the alarms are more likely to be genuine but there's no guarantee and based on my discussion with them and their web page it seems that would be more a hope and prayer http://www.sjpd.org/Records/Verified_Response.html

 

[Del91574]

Their protocol isn't clear based on that page. I would question them on the exact nature that a traditional alarm can be deemed as verified. They won't budge on the second form of verification, I can tell you that, but in the case where a perimeter detector, followed by subsequent trips of unrelated zones, outside of a system malfunction, is unlikely to be a false alarm.