An encoding method for compressing geographical coordinates in 3D space

Abstract

This paper proposed an encoding method for compressing geographical coordinates in 3D space. By the way of reducing the length of geographical coordinates, it helps to lessen the storage size of geometry information. In addition, the encoding algorithm subdivides the whole space according to octree rules, which enables progressive transmission and loading. Three main steps are included in this method: (1) subdividing the whole 3D geographic space based on octree structure, (2) resampling all the vertices in 3D models, (3) encoding the coordinates of vertices with a combination of Cube Index Code (CIC) and Geometry Code. A series of geographical 3D models were applied to evaluate the encoding method. The results showed that this method reduced the storage size of most test data by 90% or even more under the condition of a speed of encoding and decoding. In conclusion, this method achieved a remarkable compression rate in vertex bit size with a steerable precision loss. It shall be of positive meaning to the web 3d map storing and transmission.