Data compression for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration /NOAA/ weather satellite systems

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) receives high quality infrared weather images from each of its two geostationary weather satellites at an average data rate of 57 kilobits/second. These images are currently distributed to field stations over 3 kilohertz analog phone lines. The resulting loss in image quality renders the images unacceptable for proposed digital image processing. This paper documents the study leading to a current effort to implement a microprocessor-based universal noiseless coder/decoder to satisfy NOAA's requirements of high quality, good coverage and timely transmission of its infrared images.