Method and apparatus for compressing SAR signals

A method for compressing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, comprising the steps of:

• sampling the SAR data into blocks of SAR data;
• transforming each block of SAR data to a corresponding block of transform coefficients;
• quantizing each block of transform coefficient according to a quantization parameter to obtain a corresponding block of quantized transform coefficients;
• demultiplexing the blocks into sets of blocks of quantized transform coefficients;
• encoding arithmetically and in parallel, the blocks in each set of blocks of the quantized transform coefficients according to probability models to produce an intermediate bitstream for each set of blocks of quantized transform coefficients, where the encoding of the quantized transform coefficients of one block is independent of the quantized transform coefficients of a successive block;
• and
• multiplexing the intermediate of bitstreams to a compressed bitstream, wherein the sampling, transforming, quantizing, demultiplexing, encoding, and multiplexing are performed in an apparatus including an encoder.