Stressing Atmospheric Clutter Radiance Models

There is a critical, ongoing requirement for models and codes to accurately simulate atmospheric infrared (IR) backgrounds in order to analyze and predict the performance of surveillance, reconnaissance, and weapons guidance systems. The atmosphere adversely impacts infrared target detection systems. Absorption reduces the intensity of detected target signatures, bright atmospheric backgrounds reduce target/background contrast, temporal and spatial atmospheric structures confuse target detection algorithms. Atmospheric clutter sources in addition have high spectral dependence and affect each spectral band differently, further degrading target identification. This dependence makes it impossible to extrapolate information from one spectral region to another, limiting the use of measurements to their specific band pass. Spectral Sciences Inc. proposes to develop a Clutter Background Toolkit (CBT) for IR radiance clutter prediction. The CBT will contain modules for aurora, polar mesospheric clouds and sudden stratospheric warmings. The modules will make use of response functions for rapid generation of time sequences and images of radiance clutter. The CBT will utilize existing, validated atmospheric radiation transport modules currently in SAMM2 and BEST. The CBT will be designed and constructed to be integrated into MDA scene applications such as BEST/CETM to provide a realistic and consistent description of the battlespace.