Transmission of compressed tactical imagery by means of an rf link
Gary H. Conners, Chong-Sin Liou, Joe Muczynski · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1995
The joint University of Rochester/Rochester Institute of Technology `Center for Electronic Imaging Systems' (CEIS) is designed to focus on research problems of interest to industrial sponsors. A particular feature of the research is that it is organized in the `triplet' mode: each project includes a faculty researcher, an industrial partner, and a doctoral or postdoctoral fellow. Compression of tactical images for transmission over an rf link is an example of this type of research project which is being worked on in collaboration with one of the CEIS sponsors, Harris Corporation/Rf communications. The Harris Digital Video Imagery Transmission System (DVITS) is designed to fulfill the need to transmit secure imagery between unwired locations at real-time rates. DVITS specializes in transmission systems for users who rely on hf equipment operating at the low end of the frequency spectrum. However, the inherently low bandwidth of hf combined with transmission characteristics such as fading and dropout severely restrict the effective throughput. The problem is posed as one of maximizing the probability of reception of the most significant information in an m x n pixel image in the shortest possible time. Various design strategies combining image segmentation, compression, and error correction are evaluated using a realistic model for the communication channel. A recommended strategy is developed and a test method using a variety of test images is described. The methodology established here can be employed for other image transmission designs.