System for geometrically accurate compression and decompression

Abstract

A system is disclosed providing accurate compression, storage, transmission and reconstruction of both simulated and empirical data representing terrain and other physical or hypothetical signals or surfaces, in one or multiple dimensions. In one embodiment, a gradient of an original surface is generated, and the data representing that gradient is compressed, then stored and / or transmitted. Reconstruction of the gradient yields an accurate representation of the original gradient. An alternative embodiment includes taking a second gradient of the original surface before compression, in which case reconstruction yields the second gradient, from which the first gradient can also be recovered.

Description

[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 257,210, of Osher et al., filed Dec. 20, 2000, entitled “Geometrically Accurate Compression and Decompression”, which is incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to a system for compressing and reconstructing (decompressing) signals, including signals representing physical data such as terrain. Such signals may be computer-constructed data, empirically derived images or signals, or in general any information or data representing actual or simulated phenomena. [0003] After compression of data representing a terrain, digital terrain elevation (or images, indeed any graph) data (“DTED”), a common problem is accurate reconstruction of terrain features, such as the slope. Given digitized data representing terrain elevation, or indeed any graph in two or more dimensions at a data point (x,y) (or the multiple dimension extension at a data point (x1, . ....

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008] An apparatus and method according to one embodiment of the present invention are implemented in a processor-based system. A method according to the invention provides an accurately compressed and reconstructed signal, and in particular accurately reconstructed gradients of the original signal, by applying compression procedures to the gradient of the original signal. An alternative embodiment further involves the process of generating a second gradient of the original signal, and compressing that second gradient, which upon decompression provides an accurate reconstruction of the second gradient of the original signal. The methods of the invention are suitable for compressing, storing, transmitting and reconstructing both simulated and empirical data representing terrain and other physical or hypothetical signals or surfaces, in one or multiple dimensions.

Problems solved by technology

After compression of data representing a terrain, digital terrain elevation (or images, indeed any graph) data (“DTED”), a common problem is accurate reconstruction of terrain features, such as the slope.

This can lead to large errors in derived quantities obtained from the reconstructed data, in particular when the gradient of the reconstructed data is taken.

In the case of DTED, it may be important for aircraft to be aware of the precise terrain slopes, and the errors introduced by determining gradients from reconstructed data may be too great to be of practical use for many applications.

In fact, errors in the gradient are often quite large for higher compression ratios.

These errors are quite significant since the accuracy of the terrain slope is crucial in many areas, e.g. landing of aircraft in navigation exercises.

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