Improved Contrast Two Color IR Scene Projector

Under a 2007 US Navy SBIR solicitation, OPTRA developed a two-color midwave infrared (MWIR) scene projector employing digital micromirror device (DMD) technology. The system employs miniature IR sources and a series of spectral filters to fuse and project spatially identical but spectrally separated MWIR images onto a unit under test for training and testing purposes. Under the Phase II effort, OPTRA successfully designed, built, and tested a prototype projector which is presently available for the Navy"s test purposes. Following the conclusion of the Phase II effort, dialogue with PMA 272 resulted in new requirements for the projectors field of view (FOV) and dynamic range. Of particular interest is an increased dynamic range in the form of greater bit-depth of the DMD devices (on the order of 12-bits) and more importantly improved contrast to be commensurate with the increased bitdepth. To date no work has been published on increasing the contrast of MWIR DMD-based projectors; the proposed Phase II.5 effort will therefore not only satisfy the Navy"s requirement for improved test equipment, it will also add to the overall body of knowledge of DMD-based scene projectors. In addition, OPTRA proposes an increased FOV of 9090 degrees .