Coding of SAR Image Data for Data Compression

A JPEG1988 coding system extended by Speckle adaptive quantization and improved entropy coding is compared against the standard coding systems JPEG1988, JPEG2000, MPEG4-AVC and HEVC with regard to their coding efficiency related to SAR images. A Speckle adaptive quantization is presented that exploits the masking potential of the Speckle noise to achieve additional data compression. For coding that does not impair the interpretation of the SAR images, JPEG1988 requires a data rate of 1.0 bit/pixel which is slightly better than JPEG2000. JPEG1988 extended by improved entropy coding reduces the data rate to 0.81 bit/pixel and with additional Speckle adaptive quantization to 0.63 bit/pixel. Using intra mode, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC requires a data rate of 0.75 bit/pixel and HEVC a data rate of 0.66 bit/pixel.