SPx Radar Compression and Distribution

Cost Effective Solutions for Radar Video Compression and Network Distribution

• Move radar video across an Ethernet network
• Distribute a single video to multiple displays
• Use built-in radar processing algorithms or add your add
• Easy-to-use C++ classess. Light weight and cost-effective
• Self-contained distribution servers

Cambridge Pixel's SPx provides modular hardware and software to support the compression, distribution and network receipt of radar video. Radar is commonly distributed over a network to move a video from a point of acquisition through to a point of processing or display. Industry-standard ethernet networks provide a very cost-effective transport facility for this distribution.

SPx classes support the receipt of network video in raw and compressd formats. An increasing number of radar manufactures are providing direct digital outputs for their radars, so there are inevitably a number of proprietary formats for network video. SPx provides a set of software objects that accept radar video in a defined SPx format. A translation from the actual network format to that required by SPx is required and this can be done by the customer or by Cambridge Pixel as a custom interface.

Distribution Server or Software Toolkit

If you are looking for a distribution server to move radar video from a sensor to a set of displays, then Cambridge Pixel can provide a turn-key solution as either software (Linux, Window) and hardware components (PCI, PMC) or a black box server. Learn more about our HPx series radar interface cards here

Alternatively, Cambridge Pixel can provide a software toolkit of C++ classes that you can use to add radar acquisition, compression and distribution into your existing software. It is easy-to-use, compact and cost efficient. The software toolkit approach keeps you in control. You can use as many or as few SPx software modules as you need. Add capabilities such as test pattern generator, scenario generation or radar recording by simply including additional classes from the SPx library. The full range of radar processing and display capabilities are there if you need them.

Compression Standards

SPx supports radar video compression through the ORC (Open Radar Coding) format, which is Cambridge Pixel's  open-standard for radar video coding and network distribution and ZLIB, which is a widely used compression standard based on the Lempel-Ziv compression standard (learn more about Lempel-Ziv on Wikipedia here). SPx uses both ZLIB and ORC to implement low-latency, lossless compression of radar video for recording or network distribution.

ZLIB generally achieves a higher level of compression that ORC, but at the expense of more CPU time for compression and decompression. Contact Cambridge Pixel for examples of compression ratios and compression/decompression times.

If desired, other SPx processing modules can be used ahead of the compression process to improve the compression ratio at the expense of some signal loss.

Using SPx Compression Modules

You can add radar compression into your application software by using the standard classes to compress and decompress radar video. For example, radar manufacturers looking to add network distribution can use ORC or ZLIB compression to provide lossless encoding of the video. The supporting client-side classes provide easy-to-use capabilities to receive and decompress the video, which may then be made available to application software, or to more SPx processing or display modeuls.

Alternatively, you can use an SPx server to deliver radar video from a point of acquisition to multiple display consoles. You could use SPx software on the client side or not, it is your choice. Everything in SPx is open so you are free to select where you want to interface.If you need a preconfigured server application to deliver radar video to multipel clients, then SPx can supply that.

SPx-Distribution Data Sheet

Download the SPx-Distribution data sheet (pdf format) here.