Quadrate Technology (4:1 compression rate)

April 2016

Guaranteed data transfer rates of more than 400 Mbyte/s over a standard GigE interface! Is this smart marketing or reality? Following the introduction of the Photonfocus DoubleRate technology with constant 2:1 compression for high speed cameras, motion analysis system customers began asking for higher compression rates at high image quality and Photonfocus accepted the challenge.

Photonfocus immediately began development of a camera platform that would feature real-time, high quality, guaranteed 4:1 compression rate of monochrome and RGB Bayer pattern raw data.

The development goals were reached using a wavelet based transformation codec. The codec enables visual lossless compression with automatic switching to lossless compression depending on the image content and is implemented directly into the camera platform FPGA without external memory. The intraframe compression ensures a low latency and simplifies access to the image data.

The QuadRate technology is now available for the HD camera series QR1-D2048x1088-384 and three cameras models for B/W, NIR and colour recording. At full resolution, 2040 x 1088 pixels, the cameras reach 170 fps and at 1024 x 1024 pixels resolution 360 fps without any frame drops. The cameras can easily be used in multi-camera systems. 100% compatibility with the GigEVision and GenICam standards ensure easy implementation.