Local wavelet transform: a cost-efficient custom processor for space image compression

摘要

Thanks to its intrinsic scalability features, the wavelet transform has become increasingly popular as decorrelator in image compression applications. Throughput, memory requirements and complexity are important parameters when developing hardware image compression modules. An implementation of the classical, global wavelet transform requires large memory sizes and implies a large latency between the availability of the input image and the production of minimal data entities for entropy coding. Image tiling methods, as proposed by JPEG2000, reduce the memory sizes and the latency, but inevitably introduce image artefacts. The Local Wavelet Transform (LWT), presented in this paper, is a low-complexity wavelet transform architecture using a block-based processing that results in the same transformed images as those obtained by the global wavelet transform. The architecture minimizes the processing latency with a limited amount of memory. Moreover, as the LWT is an instruction-based custom processor, it can be programmed for specific tasks, such as push-broom processing of infinite-length satelite images. The features of the LWT makes it appropriate for use in space image compression, where high throughput, low memory sizes, low complexity, low power and push-broom processing are important requirements.