Atmospheric Infra-red Transmittance Calculator (AIRTraC)

The Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) needs accurate, autonomous techniques for atmospheric correction of airborne imaging sensors to support flight testing, specifically validation of Noise-Equivalent Differential Temperature (NEDT) capabilities of Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) sensors used for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) applications. A key aspect of validating NEDT specifications is assessing the impact of atmospheric effects on flight test data. SciTec, Inc. proposes to further develop and validate the Atmospheric Infrared Transmittance Calculator (AIRTraC) software tool developed in Phase I for ingesting and fusing sources of surface and vertical profile atmospheric data and calculating atmospheric transmission for MidWave InfraRed (MWIR) and Long Wave InfraRed (LWIR) ISR sensor data. Phase II will include further development of AIRTraC methodology, including incorporation of surface meteorological station data, further research into sources of atmospheric data, refinements of the surface scaling techniques, and development of rigorous uncertainty metrics in the widely varying range of atmospheric conditions and collection geometries relevant for sensor flight tests. SciTec proposes to support validation of AIRTraC during flight testing of ISR sensors through a series of measurements of atmospheric and radiometric parameters. AIRTraC will be adapted to support NEDT predictions in operational ISR scenarios.