Fractal compression for low bandwidth radio transmission of motion video

Projections of battlefield conditions under which future conflicts will be resolved have placed a high value on command, control and communication of information. Visual information is critically important for tactical planning, target identification, threat analysis, situational awareness and force leverage. Battlefield communications take place under conditions which are far from ideal regarding communications, while digitised visual information is typically associated with large data structures. This combination of large data files and low bandwidths present a difficult problem. This paper describes an image compression technique based on fractal geometry which has been used to transmit live video over SINCGARS and low bandwidth phone lines. Frame rates as high as 30 frames per second for 8 bit gray images at 80×128 image sizes have been reached in surveillance type applications over 9600 bit per second modems