FDBAQ a novel encoding scheme for Sentinel-1

Modern operational and/or high resolution SAR satellite missions impose stringent requirements on on-board data compression such as a higher data reduction ratio, more flexibility, and faster data throughput. A novel approach is flexible dynamic block adaptive quantization (FDBAQ). This method outperforms currently used block adaptive quantization with respect to Signal-to-Noise-Ratio related to the compression ratio. The FDBAQ method allows bit rate programmability with non-integer rates. This allows the SAR information throughput to be optimized for different types of targets and down-link scenarios using a tradeoff between thermal and quantization noise.