Abstract: Portable surveillance and monitoring systems are provided for effecting portable video capture, wireless transmission of video data from one or more portable video capture units (VCUs) to a central monitoring station (CMS) and wireless control of the one or more VCUs from the CMS. One or more portable VCUs are equipped with digital cameras and are located to capture video in a region of interest. Each VCU comprises a plurality of directional antennas, each of which provides antenna gain over a particular azimuthal angular range. Each VCU also comprises a controller which is configured to select a particular one of its antennas and a particular channel identifier (CID) signal and associated frequency hopping sequence which are used to implement frequency hopping spread spectrum wireless communication between the VCU and the CMS.