Viceo compression for manned space missions

A complete design solution for transmitting video compressed images from orbiting spacecraft is presented. The design drives were maximum flexibility and minimization of equipment weight, power, and dimensions. The video multiplexing system is designed to maintain asynchronous access to the link while preserving an internally synchronous structure. Reed-Solomon codes are used to obtain a practically error-free system with low overhead. Coder and decoder are able to work asynchronously. The selected coding algorithm is DCT based and allows a variable bit rate from 64 to 2048 kbit/s and also transmission of fixed images with full resolution. The presented design results show that only by developing ad hoc VLSI chips can the severe constraints for mass and power consumption of the flight hardware be met