Intraframe compression of radar image sequences for ship traffic control applications

In this paper, an intraframe scheme for high compression of X-band radar images for ship traffic control is proposed. We used a proprietary radar simulator which generates maritime scenarios as seen by one or more radar sites. We propose a modified adaptive discrete cosine transform (MADCT) scheme which allows us to classify each 8 by 8 image block by means of a threshold criterion based on ac and dc activity. The strategy of transmission of the DCT coefficients, the recovering process of blocks incorrectly discarded, and the bit-allocation phase have been properly designed to fit with the particular application. Accurate experimental results, in terms of PSNR and compression ratio, prove the superiority of the novel scheme with respect to standard coding techniques. ©2005 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.