Towards very high-resolution infrared camera core

Autor: Le Noc, Loïc, Dufour, Denis, Terroux, Marc, Tremblay, Bruno, Lambert, Julie, Mercier, Luc, Morissette, Martin, Vachon, Carl, Tang, Denis, Bergeron, Alain
Zdroj: Proceedings of SPIE; May 2011, Vol. 8012 Issue: 1 p80123P-80123P-10, 7932188p
Abstrakt: In various military, space and civilian infrared applications, there is an important need for fast prototyping. For example, detectors with small pitch compared to the diffraction limited spot radius are now available and their specificities must be studied to optimize the design of the next imaging systems. At the very heart stands a requirement for flexible camera modules that provide a multitude of output formats as well as fast adaptability. Based on this concept, INO has developed an advanced compact camera module IRXCAM that can provide both raw data as well as fully processed images under a variety of outputs: NTSC, DVI, VGA, GigE and Camera Link. This tool can be used to perform a rapid demonstration of concept for a specific application. IRXCAM now supports the bolometric detectors INO IRM160A (160 x 120 52 m pitch pixels, LWIR and THz), Ulis 04 17 1 (640 x 480 25 pitch pixels, LWIR) and Ulis 05 25 1 (1024 x 768 17 m pitch pixels). Reduction of the pixel pitch is a way to improve the compromise between the spatial resolution and the dimensions of an imaging system, mainly by reducing the required optical focal length with constant numerical aperture. Microscanning is another way that provides excellent results in terms of spatial resolution for pixel pitches as small as 25 m in the LWIR range for F/1 optics. Microscanning also preserves the field of view without increasing the number of pixels of the detector. Finally, microscanning is an efficient way to reduce the aliasing effect of a non unity filling factor, a parameter that becomes increasingly important for small pixels. This paper presents the IRXCAM-1024 camera module, its performances, and its use for microscanning with 17 m pitch pixels and commercial F/1 and F/0.86 refractive optical lenses.
Databáze: Supplemental Index