GPU lossless hyperspectral data compression system for space applications

On-board lossless hyperspectral data compression reduces data volume in order to meet NASA and DoD limited downlink capabilities. At JPL, a novel, adaptive and predictive technique for lossless compression of hyperspectral data, named the Fast Lossless (FL) algorithm, was recently developed. This technique uses an adaptive filtering method and achieves state-of-the-art performance in both compression effectiveness and low complexity. Because of its outstanding performance and suitability for real-time onboard hardware implementation, the FL compressor is being formalized as the emerging CCSDS Standard for Lossless Multispectral & Hyperspectral image compression. The FL compressor is well-suited for parallel hardware implementation. A GPU hardware implementation was developed for FL targeting the current state-of-the-art GPUs from NVIDIA^®. The GPU implementation on a NVIDIA^® GeForce^® GTX 580 achieves a throughput performance of 583.08 Mbits/sec (44.85 MSamples/sec) and an acceleration of at least 6 times a software implementation running on a 3.47 GHz single core Intel^® Xeon™ processor. This paper describes the design and implementation of the FL algorithm on the GPU. The massively parallel implementation will provide in the future a fast and practical real-time solution for airborne and space applications.