SAR complex image data compression based on quadtree and zerotree Coding in Discrete Wavelet Transform Domain: A Comparative Study

A SAR complex image data compression algorithm based on quadtree coding (QC) in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain (QC-DWT) is proposed. We show that QC-DWT achieves the best performance for SAR complex image compression. Besides this, in this work, we observed a novel phenomenon that QC-DWT outperforms the zerotree based wavelet coding algorithms, e.g., Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems-Image Data Compression (CCSDS-IDC) and Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees algorithm (SPIHT) for SAR complex image data, and there exists deficiency of CCSDS-IDC for SAR complex image data compression. This is because the DWT coefficients of SAR complex image data always have intrascale clustering characteristic and no interscale attenuation characteristic, which is different from that of SAR amplitude images and other optical images.