Investigation of Compression and Reconstruction Methods for Solar Radiation Spectra above, within, and below the Sea Ice in Polar Environments

Abstract

To reduce the amount of data transmitted, while retaining essential information on the original signal after reconstruction, this study investigated three different compression and reconstruction methods for the solar irradiance signals at different levels of the Arctic sea ice. To achieve this, characteristics of solar irradiance at different depths of the Arctic sea ice were analyzed; the solar irradiance profile was measured using a fiber optic spectrometer system at several ice packs from 11 to 25 August 2018, during the ninth Chinese National Arctic Research Expedition. Based on these measurements, three potential methods—fast Fourier transform (FFT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and Prony’s method—were selected and applied for the compression and reconstruction of a group of 12 measurements from one profile. The results indicated that the FFT method was generally superior to the DWT method considering the corrected reconstruction rate Rc, under the same compression ratio C. The FFT method had the highest Rc for signals with higher roughness, whereas Prony’s method was more suitable for smoother signals. To ensure that Rc was at least 80% and C was as large as possible, the compression and reconstruction method proposed in this study included the FFT method (C = 6.4) for the signals rougher than 1.5 and Prony’s method employing the matrix pencil method (C = 8) for the smoother signals. The proposed method was successfully verified using an independent group of solar irradiance measurements from another profile in the Arctic sea ice.