A real time lossless data compression technology for remote-sensing and other applications

Lossless data compression has been studied for many NASA missions to achieve the benefit of increased science return; reduced onboard memory requirement, station contact time and communication bandwidth. This paper first addresses the requirement for onboard applications and provides a rationale for the selection of the Rice algorithm among other available techniques. A top-level description of the Rice algorithm will be given, along with some new capabilities already implemented in both software and hardware VLSI forms. The status of the technology will be presented with its performance in several applications including remote sensing, medical imaging and seismology