Mass Fabricated Tunable Optical Filtering for Micro Miniature Multi-Mode and Hyperspectral Sensors

Several emerging guided munitions (such as APKWS and PGMM) rely on a semi-active laser (SAL) seeker system with a small array of sensitive photodiodes. All these SAL seeker systems require narrow spectral filters for reducing background light, thereby increasing system sensitivity and detection range. Current SAL seeker resonant filters have a narrow field of view, and also incur a substantial optical loss that limits detection range. During Phase I, we demonstrated at TRL 4 a new class of resonant optical filters. These filters have a wide field of view (omnidirectional), are nearly lossless; when implemented in the SAL seeker, they can significantly enhance APKWS functionality (detection range and FOV) and reduce cost (with a simpler optical train for the SAL). During this Phase II project, we will further develop these prototype filters; at the end of the Phase II project, we will have demonstrated TRL 6/7 for the APKWS program.