Real-Time Hyperspectral Image Compression Onto Embedded GPUs

Real-time hyperspectral imaging on-board compression represents a critical processing step in many remote sensing applications where the acquired hyperspectral data need to be efficiently stored and/or transferred. However, the complexity of the compression algorithms as well as the volume of data to be compressed and the limited computational resources of the hardware devices available on-board turn the real-time compression into a very challenging task. This paper presents a low-power-consumption solution for real-time lossy compression of hyperspectral images. The lossy compression algorithm for hyperspectral image system (HyperLCA) compressor has been implemented onto two NVIDIA Jetson developer kits. These NVIDIA boards include low-power embedded graphic processing units, which allow parallel programing for speeding up the compression process at a reasonable low power consumption. The experiments carried out in this paper are oriented to the necessities imposed by a specific smart farming application although all drawn conclusions are extrapolable to other fields in which remotely sensed hyperspectral images are to be compressed in real time. The obtained results verify both the good performance of the HyperLCA compressor for the targeted application and the achievement of a real-time performance by using the developed implementations. Additionally, several comparisons and conclusions have been drawn from the experiments in relation to the different strategies employed for accelerating the compression process.