GoingToMeet

Next generation instruments to be carried on-board spacecraft are producing more and more large quantity of information, due to the recent technological improvements. The huge amount of data generated on-board, is competing with the limited channel resources available for the transmission of data on-ground. The result of this scenario is the increasing importance that on-board payload data compression is gaining in the framework of a spacecraft design.

In remote sensing systems, a major problem lies in the limited availability of bandwidth and resources necessary for acquisition, processing and transmission of the images related to a given terrestrial area, as acquired by the sensors mounted on an airborne or spaceborne remote platform. Since the spatial, spectral and radiometric resolutions of optical sensors are getting finer and finer, the amount of collected data is huge. New-generation sensors aim at increasing the resolution even further. Because of the huge amount of data, powerful compression algorithms are required to match the available channel resources. Moreover, many Earth Observation satellites are required to transmit data on-ground in real time, this means that compression devices with very high throughput are requested.