Edge-ANN: Storage-Efficient Edge-Based Remote Sensing Feature Retrieval

TL;DR

Edge-ANN is a storage-efficient framework for real-time remote sensing feature retrieval on edge devices, using a novel anchor-based partitioning method to reduce storage needs while maintaining high accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a new anchor-based ANN method with a binary optimization algorithm that eliminates dimension dependence, improving storage efficiency for edge devices.

Findings

Achieves 30-40% reduction in secondary storage compared to baselines.

Maintains 95-97% of baseline accuracy.

Outperforms mainstream methods in storage-constrained scenarios.

Abstract

Meeting real-time constraints for high-performance Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) search remains a critical challenge in remote sensing edge devices, which are essentially fusion systems like micro-satellites and UAVs, largely due to stringent limitations in primary (RAM) and secondary (disk) storage. To address this challenge, we propose Edge-ANN, an innovative ANN framework specifically engineered for storage efficiency. The core innovation of Edge-ANN lies in its departure from traditional tree-based methods that store high-dimensional hyperplanes. Instead, it leverages pairs of existing data items, termed "anchors," to implicitly define spatial partitions. To ensure these partitions are both balanced and effective, we have developed a novel Binary Anchor Optimization algorithm.This architectural shift eliminates the dimension-dependence of the space complexity. Rigorous experiments on three multi-source datasets, MillionAID, High-resolution Urban Complex Dataset, and GlobalUrbanNet Dataset, demonstrate that under simulated edge environments with dual storage constraints, Edge-ANN achieves a 30-40% reduction in secondary storage compared to the baseline, at the cost of a minor 3-5% drop in retrieval accuracy. Furthermore, its overall retrieval performance surpasses that of other mainstream methods in these constrained scenarios. Collectively, these results establish Edge-ANN as a state-of-the-art solution for enabling large-scale, high-performance, real-time remote sensing feature retrieval on edge devices with exceptionally constrained storage. The codes of Edge-ANN are available at https://github.com/huaijiao666/Edge-ANN.