A RECONFIGURABLE REAL-TIME VIDEO CODEC

FUTURE NASA MISSIONS WILL BE SEVERELY LIMITED WITHOUT SUITABLE DATA-COMPRESSION ALGORITHMS TO ALLOW USE OF HIGH- RESOLUTION AND HIGH-FRAME-RATE SENSORS. THIS PROJECT WILL DEVELOP A HYBRID SIMULATION SUBSYSTEM SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR RESEARCH IN IMAGE-DATA COMPRESSION. THE SYSTEM WILL CONTAIN MULTIPLE DSP CHIPS AND CUSTOM HARDWARE MODULES INTERCONNECTED TO PROVIDE COMPRESSION AT (NEAR) REAL-TIME, VIDEO PROCESSING RATES. THE SUBSYSTEM WILL PLUG INTO AN INEXPENSIVE WORKSTATION AND PROVIDE AN IMAGE-COMPRESSION STATION THAT CAN BE READILY PROGRAMMED TO INVESTIGATE DIFFERENT COMPRESSION ALGORITHMS. THIS WILL PROVIDE THE RAW COMPUTING POWER NEEDED TO ALLOW TRULY INTERACTIVE SUBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION OF COMPRESSION PARAMETERS. A FLEXIBLE, NEAR-REAL-TIME-IMAGE-DATA COMPRESSION BOARD FOR AVAILABLE WORKSTATIONS WOULD BE A LOW-COST APPROACH FOR RESEARCH IN IMAGE-DATA COMPRESSION.