Enhanced Image Capture and Transfer Capability

The quality and quantity of information directly available to command authorities is becoming an increasingly dominant factor in modern force projection. The increasing demand for information in the form of digital imagery and real time video has exposed the severe bandwidth limitations of current data link resources. The solution to this problem is to compress the data. This recognition has led to many efforts in both the military and the commercial world trying to develop more effective data compression technologies. However, the only result of these efforts is that system designers can choose between lossless techniques, which do not compress the data very much, and lossy techniques (JPEG being the most common example) which destroy too much critical detail. The DRA Team will design and build an Enhanced Image Capture and Transfer tool that uses legacy equipment and a revolutionary compression algorithm to increase the information bandwidth of existing data links by 500% to 1000%.