Nazeeh Aranki

GPU lossless hyperspectral data compression system for space applications

On-board lossless hyperspectral data compression reduces data volume in order to meet NASA and DoD limited downlink capabilities. At JPL, a novel, adaptive and predictive technique for lossless compression of hyperspectral data, named the Fast Lossless (FL) algorithm, was recently developed. This technique uses an adaptive filtering method and achieves state-of-the-art performance in both compression effectiveness and low complexity. Because of its outstanding performance and suitability for real-time onboard hardware implementation, the FL compressor is being formalized as the emerging CCSDS Standard for Lossless Multispectral & Hyperspectral image compression. The FL compressor is well-suited for parallel hardware implementation. A GPU hardware implementation was developed for FL targeting the current state-of-the-art GPUs from NVIDIA®. The GPU implementation on a NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580 achieves a throughput performance of 583.08 Mbits/sec (44.85 MSamples/sec) and an acceleration of at least 6 times a software implementation running on a 3.47 GHz single core Intel® Xeon™ processor. This paper describes the design and implementation of the FL algorithm on the GPU. The massively parallel implementation will provide in the future a fast and practical real-time solution for airborne and space applications.

Fast and adaptive lossless on-board hyperspectral data compression system for space applications

Efficient on-board lossless hyperspectral data compression reduces data volume in order to meet NASA and DoD limited downlink capabilities. The technique also improves signature extraction, object recognition and feature classification capabilities by providing exact reconstructed data on constrained downlink resources. At JPL a novel, adaptive and predictive technique for lossless compression of hyperspectral data was recently developed. This technique uses an adaptive filtering method and achieves a combination of low complexity and compression effectiveness that far exceeds state-of-the-art techniques currently in use. The JPL-developed ‘Fast Lossless’ algorithm requires no training data or other specific information about the nature of the spectral bands for a fixed instrument dynamic range. It is of low computational complexity and thus well-suited for implementation in hardware, which makes it practical for flight implementations of pushbroom instruments. A prototype of the compressor (and decompressor) of the algorithm is available in software, but this implementation may not meet speed and real-time requirements of some space applications. Hardware acceleration provides performance improvements of 10x–100x vs. the software implementation (about 1M samples/sec on a Pentium IV machine). This paper describes a hardware implementation of the ‘Fast Lossless’ compression algorithm on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The FPGA implementation targets the current state-of-the-art FPGAs (Xilinx Virtex IV and V families) and compresses one sample every clock cycle to provide a fast and practical real-time solution for Space applications.

Hardware Implementation of Lossless Adaptive and Scalable Hyperspectral Data Compression for Space

Efficient on-board lossless hyperspectral data compression reduces data volume in order to meet NASA and DoD limited downlink capabilities. The technique also improves signature extraction, object recognition and feature classification capabilities by providing exact reconstructed data on constrained downlink resources. At JPL a novel, adaptive and predictive technique for lossless compression of hyperspectral data was recently developed. This technique uses an adaptive filtering method and achieves a combination of low complexity and compression effectiveness that far exceeds state-of-the-art techniques currently in use. The JPL-developed ‘Fast Lossless’ algorithm requires no training data or other specific information about the nature of the spectral bands for a fixed instrument dynamic range. It is of low computational complexity and thus well-suited for implementation in hardware. It was modified for pushbroom instruments and makes it practical for flight implementations. A prototype of the compressor (and decompressor) of the algorithm is available in software, but this implementation may not meet speed and real-time requirements of some space applications. Hardware acceleration provides performance improvements of 10x-100x vs. the software implementation (about 1M samples/sec on a Pentium IV machine). This paper describes a hardware implementation of the ‘Modified Fast Lossless’ compression algorithm for pushbroom instruments on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The FPGA implementation targets the current state-of-the-art FPGAs (Xilinx Virtex IV and V families) and compresses one sample every clock cycle to provide a fast and practical real-time solution for Space applications.

Real-time CCSDS lossless adaptive hyperspectral image compression on parallel GPGPU & multicore processor systems

The new CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) Lossless Multispecral&Hyperspectral Image Compression Standard was designed to facilitate a fast hardware implementation. This paper analyses that algorithm with regard to available parallelism and describes fast parallel implementations in software for GPGPU and Multicore CPU architectures. We show that careful software implementation, using hardware acceleration in the form of GPGPUs or even just multicore processors, can exceed the performance of existing hardware and software implementations by up to 11× and break the real-time barrier for the first time for a typical test application.

Spectral Ringing Artifacts in Hyperspectral Image Data Compression

When using 3-D wavelet transforms for hyperspectral image compression, systematic variations in signal level of different spectral bands can cause widely-varying mean values in spatial planes of spatially low-pass subbands. Failing to account for this phenomenon can have detrimental effects on image compression, including reduced effectiveness in compressing spatially low-pass subband data, and biases in some reconstructed spectral bands.

Applying Radiation Hardening by Software to Fast Lossless compression prediction on FPGAs

As scientists endeavor to learn more about the worlds ecosystems, engineers are pushed to develop more sophisticated instruments. With these advancements comes an increase in the amount of data generated. For satellite based instruments the additional data requires sufficient bandwidth be available to transmit the data. Alternatively, compression algorithms can be employed to reduce the bandwidth requirements. This work is motivated by the proposed HyspIRI mission, which includes two imaging spectrometers measuring from visible to short wave infrared (VSWIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) that saturate the projected bandwidth allocations. We present a novel investigation into the capability of using FPGAs integrated with embedded PowerPC processors to adequately perform the predictor function of the Fast Lossless (FL) compression algorithm for multispectral and hyperspectral imagery. Furthermore, our design includes a multi-PowerPC implementation which incorporates recently developed Radiation Hardening by Software (RHBSW) techniques to provide software-based fault tolerance to commercial FPGA devices. Our results show low performance overhead (4-8%) while achieving a speedup of 1.97× when utilizing both PowerPCs. Finally, the evaluation of the proposed system includes resource utilization, performance metrics, and an analysis of the vulnerability to Single Event Upsets (SEU) through the use of a hardware based fault injector.

Reliability assessment of high temperature electronics and packaging technologies for Venus mission

In this paper, the potentials of the current state-of-the-art electronics and packaging technologies for Venus missions is evaluated and intend to address the survivability and reliability of the selected technologies and develop design-for-reliability guidelines for mission integration.

A case study: Design for reliability for a rail-to-rail operational amplifier for wide temperature range operation for Mars missions

A case study is presented applying a design-for-reliability methodology to design, fabricate and qualify a quad rail-to-rail operational amplifier for the wide temperature range operation of -140degC to +125degC to for space applications. The design-for-reliability approach was developed and implemented from transistor level up to board/system level, along with a comprehensive qualification procedure for the wide temperature range. The quad op-amp is used for a flight mission and available from a commercial production line.

Design and Qualification Methodology for a Successful Technology Infusion for a Wide Temperature Op-Amp

In this paper, we present a methodology for design and qualification of microelectronics for low temperature applications, which has enabled the successful infusion of a custom designed Operational Amplifier into flight mission. The Op-Amp was designed to target a wide temperature range of -150degC to +125degC for at least 5 years operation for Mars Mission. The design and qualification methodology developed have provided the critical path for the technology infusion.