Video Coding System for Sensor Data Transmission Over Rotorcraft Tactical Radios

"Broadata Communications, Inc. (BCI), proposes to develop a rate adaptable video compression/decompression system (RAVS) in conjunction with current or future generation tactical radio equipment to address Army's need to distribute video sensor dataoff-platform for use in teaming operations. The RAVS uses a new generation wavelet video coder, which can compress video data in a highly adaptive approach to accommodate a wide variety of radio channel specifications, while maintaining the optimalperformance of video compression quality. This enables decoding of video data with variable bit rates and different image sizes, depending on the application and condition of the tactical radio channel. In addition, a unique bit rate allocation algorithmis also applied to the system to increase the systems performance against channel noises and ensure a constant bit-rate compressed video transmission. The proposed system will compress video data in real time and with a high compression ratio. Because ofits low complexity and high performance design, the RAVS will be compact and light enough for use onboard aircraft, including unmanned aerial vehicles and rotorcraft, as well as by mobile ground personnel. The resulting system will be able to provide videoinformation that can be transmitted across low bandwidth communication systems. Applications include video-telephones, video security surveillance, teleconferencing, medical imaging, and emergency