A Model for Progressive Transmission of Spatial Data Based on Shape Complexity

Due to the limited bandwidth available to mobile devices transmitting large amount of geographic data over the Internet to these devices is challenging. Such data is often high-resolution vector data and is far too detailed with respect to most location-based services (LBS) user requirements. A less detailed version may be sent prior to the complete dataset using a progressive transmission strategy. Progressive transmission is generally performed by transmitting a series of independent pre-computed representations of the original dataset at increasing levels of detail where the transitions between these levels are not necessarily smooth. A model is proposed in this paper for selective progressive transmission which will provide smoother transmission over increasing levels of detail. We define criteria for the comparison of similarity between the progressive states of the vector-data based on shape complexity of the polygon features. This allows development of a real-time strategy for the progressive transmission of vector data over the Internet to mobile devices