Standard Image Compression for Data Link Transmission

Vexcel Corporation proposes to develop a general-purpose compression algorithm for use with complex SAR data. This algorithm will be general in nature and will not be tuned for any particular end-user application. Compressed data will retain theappropriate information required to perform coherent processing, ATD/R, ACD as well as other exploitation techniques including MASINT techniques. The algorithm will also be able to effectively compress data that is multi-channel. The compressionalgorithm is data dependent, and is expected to produce compression gains between 2 and 10. Vexcel proposes to perform limited demonstrations that may include independent quantitative exploitation evaluations.Compression of SAR data will allow morecoverage and/or resolution to be obtained using existing radar technology, with no sacrifice in performance. This applies to civilian, commercial and DoD applications. Potentially, a general purpose compression scheme such as this may be useful over abroad range of future SAR system.