A VLSI design for universal noiseless coding

Along with the advent of the information era comes an unprecedented increase both in data volume for storage and in transmission rate for communication links in both terrestrial and space applications. This increase more often than not places a severe demand on the need for higher capability in both the communication link and data storage. This problem can be significantly reduced by utilizing data compression techniques. This paper presents a practical, efficient and noiseless data compression technique. This techniques is a simplified version of the BARC image compression system which will be used on the Galileo mission to Jupiter [1], [2]. A conceptual VLSI design capable of meeting real-time processing rates is provided. The VLSI approach yields low power, weight and volume requirements that make this form of BARC an attractive addition to future low budget space flight missions. Potential applications of this design to future spaceflight instruments, such as the Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and the High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (HIRIS) are described.