A proposed method for lossless image compression in nano-satellite systems

摘要

This paper introduces a lossless image compression algorithm aimed at compressing thermal images captured, stored and transmitted by a Nano-satellite system. This algorithm is applied specifically to thermal grey scale images. The compression method used tries to achieve a balance between the compression ratio achieved and the computational power consumed onboard a nanosatellite. For this purpose, the proposed method consists of various stages through which the image is passed. The paper describes the compression efficiency that is achieved using each stage and the subsequent hardware implementation to achieve desired data transfer rates. The proposed algorithm is easily implementable, tries to minimize the memory required onboard the satellite to judiciously use hardware resources, which are important factors for real time image compression on Nano-satellite systems. The algorithm is applied on a few images and the compression ratio obtained with each image is compared.