Hyperspectral Image Compression on Reconfigurable Platforms

NASA’s satellites currently do not make use of advanced image compression techniques during data transmission to earth because of limitations in the available platforms. With the advent of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Adaptive Computing technologies it is now possible to construct a system, which compresses the data stream before down linking. Our work is part of a NASA-sponsored study on the design and implementation of FPGA-based Hyperspectral Image Compression algorithms for use in space. In this paper we present an implementation of the SPIHT image compression routine in reconfigurable logic. SPIHT is a progressive wavelet-based image compression coder. It first converts the image into its wavelet transform and then transmits information about the wavelet coefficients. We discuss both memory storage considerations and optimizations to the original SPIHT algorithm for use in hardware. To fully utilize all of the memory bits for each wavelet coefficient and reduce me...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: FCCM
• Authors: Thomas W. Fry, Scott Hauck
• Keywords: FCCM 2002, Image Compression, Original Spiht Algorithm, SPIHT, VLSI