Application of compression and satellite communications to cockpit video transmission

A prototype of a cockpit video system for the transmission of video from an aircraft cockpit to a ground facility using a very low bandwidth satellite communications system is described. The aircraft is equipped with a satellite telephone capable of voice and 4800-9600 baud data/facsimile transmissions, using the Canadian MSAT geostationary mobile communications satellite. Consideration is also being given to utilizing the Globalstar satellite communications system, which operates at 9600 baud. In order to transmit video at these low bit rates, compression is essential. The initial prototype uses a simple motion video approach using the SPIHT wavelet compression algorithm on a frame by frame basis. The objective of this work is transmission of reasonable quality video with frame rates on the order of 0.5 Hz. A rate of 0.37 Hz has been demonstrated in initial testing.