ABSTRACT
Contents 15.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 15.2 Reconfigurable Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
15.2.1 FPGAs and Reconfigurable Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 15.2.2 Reconfigurable Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
15.3 The Promise of Reconfigurable Computing for Remote Sensing . . . . . . . . 364 15.4 Radiation-Hardened FPGAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 15.5 Case Studies of Remote Sensing Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
15.5.1 Wavelet-Based Dimension Reduction of Hyperspectral Imagery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
15.5.2 Cloud Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368 15.5.2.1 ACCA Hardware Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 15.5.2.2 Normalization module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 15.5.2.3 Pass-One Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 15.5.2.4 Detection Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 15.5.2.5 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
15.6 Summary and Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
The trend for remote sensing satellite missions has always been towards smaller size, lower cost, more flexibility, and higher computational power. On-board processing, as a solution, permits a good utilization of expensive resources. Instead of storing and forwarding all captured images, data processing can be performed on-orbit prior to
downlink, resulting in the reduction of communication bandwidth as well as simpler and faster subsequent computations to be performed at ground stations. Reconfigurable computers (RCs) combine the flexibility of traditional microprocessors with the power of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Therefore, RCs are a promising candidate for on-board preprocessing.
