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We are the Group on Interactive Coding of Images (GICI), a formal group of researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) dedicated to study image coding techniques, with a particular interest on satellite image coding. Our group has a solid track record of successful research projects and relevant scientific publications. Within our research tasks we have developed several tools reproducing and improving state-of-art methods for image compression, e. g., we have created an implementation of JPEG2000 or and implementation of the CCSDS-122 recommendation for lossy 2D image coding. Both JPEG and CCSDS are standardization groups, the former is group of experts in image compression, while the latter is a consortium of the leading space agencies dedicated to standardize space-related technologies.

We release all our implementations and experimental tools as open-source, so that other research groups can reproduce our results and so that our technical advances are adopted by the community. In this regard, we have developed an implementation of the emerging CCSDS-123 standard for on-board lossless image coding of multi- and hyperspectral data (i.e., a system that exploits the redundancy between the spectral bands of a multi- or hyperspectral sensor). The CCSDS Recommended Standard (CCSDS-123.0-R-1) is still a draft (or a "red book" in CCSDS terms) and it is expected that it will become a full CCSDS Recommended Standard soon. We call our implementation Emporda, following the tradition of naming coding software after natural parks. The aim of Emporda is to provide a research implementation that can be useful as a reference, in order to study how the algorithm work, to make a new different implementation, or to document the performance the future Recommended Standard can achieve.

Emporda is an implementation of a multi/hyperspectral image coding standard designed to be capable of operating on board a spacecraft taking into account all the constraints that this implies. This is an poses new challenges in relation to traditional image compression algorithms by two facts:

• Multi- or hyperspectral sensors are useful scientific instruments often used as remote sensing devices, either on board of aircrafts or spacecrafts, because of its many scientific applications. The very high amounts of information produced by such devices and the bandwidth constraints of satellites, compels the use of image compression techniques. Moreover, this kind of images differs from traditional images in that they require specific coding methods that exploit its spectral redundancy to achieve competitive coding gains.
  
  
• On-board image coding algorithms have strong constraints on its computational resources. Low power consumption, radiation hardening and smaller economies of scale are factors that limit such methods. In this regard, it is necessary when designing on-board coding techniques to take into account the relation between their coding efficiency and the resources they consume. A significant number of efficient techniques are discarded because of resource consumption constraints.

More evidence of the significance of this project might be the ESA/CNES organized conference dedicated to this subject of on-board payload data compression OBPDC.

Emporda development has been partially financed by the SOCIS 2011 program of the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency. Selected student has been Konstantin Mamalakis from the University of Patras (Greece), who has contributed the Block-Adaptive Entropy Coder of Emporda and a band-reordering preprocessor.

Emporda software (a CCSDS-123 implementation)
		EMPORDA SOFTWARE 1.0	All the source code, compiled jar files and manuals.	TAR GZIP (281KB)
		Complete Manual	Documentation.	PDF (127KB)