Current status of satellite data compression in Canadian Space Agency

Abstract

One of the challenges in the development of a hyperspectral satellite is the extremely high data rate due to the huge data volume generated on board, which exceeds the downlink capacity, and may quickly exhaust the onboard storage capacity. To deal with this challenge the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has been developing data compression technologies for satellite imagery data for many years. Compression techniques for operational use have been developed. Recently, two near lossless data compression techniques for hyperspectral imagery have been developed and implemented in hardware. The CSA is considering a near lossless data compressor for use on-board a hyperspectral satellite in order to reduce the requirement for on-board storage and to better match the available downlink capacity. This invited paper is to review the research and development of satellite data compression for hyperspectral imager at CSA, briefly summarize the two near lossless compression techniques, to address the application based assessment of the impact of lossy or near lossless data compression on Earth observation applications, and to provide up-to-date status of the hardware implementation of the on-board data compression technologies.

More efficient satellite data transmission

“…The first was targeted for real-time application, while the second was for nonreal-time use (see Figure 2). 5 The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) 6 is developing new international standards for satellite multiand hyperspectral data compression. The SAMVQ has been selected as a candidate.…”