High-speed uncooled MWIR hostile fire indication sensor

L. Zhang; F. P. Pantuso; G. Jin; A. Mazurenko; M. Erdtmann; S. Radhakrishnan; J. Salerno

doi:10.1117/12.884591

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20 May 2011 High-speed uncooled MWIR hostile fire indication sensor

L. Zhang, F. P. Pantuso, G. Jin, A. Mazurenko, M. Erdtmann, S. Radhakrishnan, J. Salerno

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Proceedings Volume 8012, Infrared Technology and Applications XXXVII; 801219 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.884591
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2011, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

Hostile fire indication (HFI) systems require high-resolution sensor operation at extremely high speeds to capture hostile fire events, including rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft artillery, heavy machine guns, anti-tank guided missiles and small arms. HFI must also be conducted in a waveband with large available signal and low background clutter, in particular the mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR). The shortcoming of current HFI sensors in the MWIR is the bandwidth of the sensor is not sufficient to achieve the required frame rate at the high sensor resolution. Furthermore, current HFI sensors require cryogenic cooling that contributes to size, weight, and power (SWAP) in aircraft-mounted applications where these factors are at a premium. Based on its uncooled photomechanical infrared imaging technology, Agiltron has developed a low-SWAP, high-speed MWIR HFI sensor that breaks the bandwidth bottleneck typical of current infrared sensors. This accomplishment is made possible by using a commercial-off-the-shelf, high-performance visible imager as the readout integrated circuit and physically separating this visible imager from the MWIR-optimized photomechanical sensor chip. With this approach, we have achieved high-resolution operation of our MWIR HFI sensor at 1000 fps, which is unprecedented for an uncooled infrared sensor. We have field tested our MWIR HFI sensor for detecting all hostile fire events mentioned above at several test ranges under a wide range of environmental conditions. The field testing results will be presented.

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L. Zhang, F. P. Pantuso, G. Jin, A. Mazurenko, M. Erdtmann, S. Radhakrishnan, and J. Salerno "High-speed uncooled MWIR hostile fire indication sensor", Proc. SPIE 8012, Infrared Technology and Applications XXXVII, 801219 (20 May 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.884591

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