Data Processing and Compression of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies on Board the PLANCK Satellite

Abstract

We present a simple way of coding and compressing the data on board the Planck instruments (HFI and LFI) to address the problem of the on board data reduction. This is a critical issue in the Planck mission. The total information that can be downloaded to Earth is severely limited by the telemetry allocation. This limitation could reduce the amount of diagnostics sent on the stability of the radiometers and, as a consequence, curb the final sensitivity of the CMB anisotropy maps. Our proposal to address this problem consists in taking differences of consecutive circles at a given sky pointing. To a good approximation, these differences are independent of the external signal, and are dominated by thermal (white) instrumental noise. Using simulations and analytical predictions we show that high compression rates, $c_r \simeq 10$, can be obtained with minor or zero loss of CMB sensitivity. Possible effects of digital distortion are also analized. The proposed scheme allows for flexibility to optimize the relation with other critical aspects of the mission. Thus, this study constitutes an important step towards a more realistic modeling of the final sensitivity of the CMB temperature anisotropy maps.