Title of Paper: Real-Time Data Processing Onboard Remote Sensor Platforms

Principal Author: Mr. Scott Lindell

Abstract: With EO-1 Hyperion and MightySat in orbit and Warfighter-1 scheduled for launch this summer NASA and the DoD are showing its continued commitment to HSI. As these systems are fielded and made operational, the large amounts of sensor data generated can result in expensive communication and data handling systems. Lockheed Martin with its experience with spacecraft design and expertise in developing special purpose real-time onboard processors has teamed with Applied Signal & Image Technology (ASIT) who has an extensive heritage in HSI to develop a real-time and intelligent onboard processing (OBP) system for reducing the HSI sensor downlink requirements. Our objective is to reduce the downlink requirement by a factor > 100, while retaining the necessary spectral fidelity of the sensor data that is needed to reach the many science, military, and intelligence goals of these systems. Our initial spectral compression simulations leverage the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) spectral exploitation algorithms for segmentation, material identification and spectral compression that ASIT has developed. ASIT will also support the modification and integration of this COTS software into the OBP. Other commercially available COTS software for lossless spatial compression will also be employed as part of the overall compression processing sequence. Demonstrations presenting our initial capability will be presented at the August meeting.

Next year and in the 3rd year elements of a high-performance re-configurable OBP will be brass-boarded to implement proven preprocessing steps that distill the HSI data stream in both spectral and spatial dimensions. The system will intelligently reduce the volume of data that must be stored, transmitted to the ground and processed while minimizing the loss of information. Data will be reduced in a manner that maintains the necessary spectral, spatial and radiometric properties of the important data and creates scientifically useful products, which increases the utility and accessibility of the data.