The prototype effort within the SHAred Reconnaissance Pod (SHARP) program successfufly demonstrated real-time reconnaissance operation ofthe prototype SI-tARP system on an F/A-18F and ofthe prototype SHARP payload on a P-3 in coordinated flights, each aircraft downlinking imagery to a NAVIS ground station and disp'aying that imagery in real time on August 28, 2001 in Washington, DC. The principal technology objectives to verify that dual-band camera technology was sufficiently mature and that the SHARP Reconnaissance Management System (SRMS) with its operating software could control the SHARP subsystems and deliver real-time high-bandwidth reconnaissance imagery were achieved through the demonstration flights. The prototype SHARP Pod system is now used as a test asset in support of the E&MD phase of the SHARP program. Further development of technology for SHARP is continuing. The Airborne Real-time Imagery Exploitation System (ARIES) has been developed for incorporation into the SRMS to provide the flight crew enhanced image exploitation capability for time critical strike. ARIES capability is undergoing continuing development and evaluation in combination with Fast Tactical Imagery (FTI) real-time, cockpit-to-user, transmission ofthe selected imagery.
The NRL Optical Sciences Division has developed and demonstrated ground and airborne-based control, display, and exploitation stations for simultaneous use of multiple dissimilar unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems. The demonstrated systems allow operation on airborne and ground mobile platforms and allow for the control and exploitation of multiple on-board airborne and/or remote unmanned sensor systems simultaneously. The sensor systems incorporated into the control and display stations include visible and midwave infrared (EO/MWIR) panchromatic and visible through short wave infrared (VNIR-SWIR) hyperspectral (HSI) sensors of various operational types (including step-stare, push-broom, whisk-broom, and video). Demonstrated exploitation capabilities include real-time screening, sensor control, pre-flight and real-time payload/platform mission planning, geo-referenced imagery mosaicing, change detection, stereo imaging, moving target tracking, and networked dissemination to distributed exploitation nodes (man-pack, vehicle, and command centers). Results from real-time flight tests using ATR, Finder, and TERN UAV's are described.
Large-format digital reconnaissance sensors (10k x 1Ok) will soon operate at rates exceeding 100 Megapixels/sec. Operation of these airborne sensors requires lossy compression prior to real-time recording or transmission to a ground station. Wavelets have been shown to reproduce high quality imagery at both low and high compression ratios while being robust enough to efficiently compress different image classes without modifying algorithms or updating codebooks. One current implementation problem is that a full image frame is too large to compress on-board in real-time. Although parallel hardware implementations increase compression speed, undesirable reconstruction boundary artifacts can be introduced which can adversely affect the desired image analysis. This paper analyzes the effects of reconstruction artifacts on image quality.Two parallel wavelet schemes were tested, segmenting the full image frames into square Sub-Images (512x512) and into rectangular Channels (2kx128). Both schemes allow real-time operation using 8 compression processors operating at 50 segmentskec. The Sub-Image scheme equally exploits redundancy in both spatial dimensions and, for large imagery, minimizes the number or reconstruction boundaries (e.g. 38 for a lOkxlOk image compared to 83 for the Channel scheme). Twelve digital airbome reconnaissance images taken at different altitudes (5-25kft) with varying scene content and image complexity were used in the simulations to ensure robustness of the results.The table below shows combined objective performance results using a 40:l compression ratio, which would allow transmission of 1-2 framedsec over a single 42.8 Mbps Common Data Link sub-channel. The reconstruction boundary edges were visible using both parallel schemes and, although the perceivable ground resolvable distance (measured by MIL-STD 150A Photo Resolution Bar Target analysis) was reduced by the 40: 1 wavelet compression itself, no such resolution loss was caused by the reconstruction edges. Relative to compressing the full 10k x 10k image, the parallel schemes introduce minimal objective or subjective image degradation and reduce the required compression timc more than 8x.
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