SBIR-STTR Award

CIRRUS is an innovative marriage of cloud computing and state-of-the-art compression methods to satisfy the AF131-047 objective, to “Develop a cloud computing architecture that can transport infrared data securely and in compliance with DoD standards.” The user can designate image areas of interest or let CIRRUS processes automatically select areas of “detectability.” In either case, the cloud optimizes performance (compression ratio and compression/dissemination speed) automatically. Cloud elements intelligently partition the image into compressible “parts” and distribute them among multiple, proven, and established (COTS) lossy and lossless compression applications to accomplish optimal, combined lossy and lossless compression and speed performance. These “parts” are not merely spatial “chips” of the original image, but artfully-constructed image components across several image dimensions, designed to optimize compression performance through the cloud. At the warfighter’s terminal, applications from the cloud decompress the image “parts” and re-assemble them into a usable image. Cloud flexibility allows moving the algorithms among platforms to optimize performance based on different platforms’ capabilities. In Phase I we will design and implement a cloud architecture feasibility test setup on representative servers, test it, quantitatively evaluate feasibility, and prepare a commercialization plan and preliminary design for Phase II.

Benefit:
CIRRUS solves the topic’s IR compression and standards/security compliance problem with cost-effective, proven technologies. It is applicable to similar needs across myriad government agencies. CIRRUS can be commercialized as an interactive information management system and as stand-alone compression applications. There are significant commercial applications in many industries including interactive healthcare, entertainment, and telecommunications, and a general explosion in cloud computing market growth to which CIRRUS applies.

Keywords:
Cloud computing, Cloud architecture, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Lossless image compression, Lossy image c

CIRRUS is an innovative marriage of cloud computing and state-of-the-art compression methods to develop a secure cloud computing environment for providing Infrared (IR) space surveillance data to warfighters via a high bandwidth constrained channel (56k). CIRRUS works by partitioning images and distributing the resulting segments, known as “chips” throughout the high performance portions of the cloud. This allows us to perform processing tasks such as compression and encryption at the data node optimally. Downloads start with the first available chip, further reducing time to retrieve any particular image. In addition, CIRRUS incorporates several novel algorithms including: 1) a method to find images with important features without downloading the entire image set, 2) an approach to better match the operational need and reduce overall bandwidth requirements, and 3) a method that can reduce the required bandwidth by identifying which parts of an image could be provided as lossy. These algorithms will serve to facilitate faster data downloads and provide an example of how the architecture can be extended with future image processing features. These capabilities will be integrated in a CIRRUS prototype to demonstrate the performance, security, feasibility and failover capabilities of a cloud computing architecture.

Benefit:
CIRRUS solves the topic’s IR compression and standards/security compliance problem with cost-effective, proven technologies. It is applicable to similar needs across myriad government and commercial organizations. CIRRUS has enormous benefits any time a small portion of a massive image dataset is needed for rapid, on-the-fly application in the field. Analysis and visualization can be provided to a bandwidth constrained device and could help: precision agriculture, construction, the medical community and first responders, and telecommunications just to name a few. The general explosion in cloud computing market growth will result in more target platforms on which to run CIRRUS and more target applications that could use CIRRUS services.

Keywords:
Cloud Computing, Image Processing, Cloud Architecture, Image Data, Image Compression, Infrared, Space Surveillance Data, Web Application Service, Cloud Failover Capabilities