Abstract:In this paper, based on the theory of the Block Adaptive Vector Quantization (BAVQ) algorithm, a variable-rate algorithm is proposed. In order to reduce the encoding computation complexity of the improved BAVQ algorithm, a fast VQ search algorithm and a look-up table to found quantizer control (threshold) are used. Using this improved algorithm to compress SAR raw data, a higher encoding efficiency is achieved and the SNR does not decrease in evidence. The decompressed images reserve most of details on the images resulted from raw data.