HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPACT LIGHTWEIGHT LWIR HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGER

The primary goal of this Phase II effort is to design, fabricate, and evaluate a compact, lightweight, demonstration LWIR hyperspectral imaging sensors enabled by an innovative design form and dispersing element technology that is suitable for use on uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). An alignment and test procedure will be developed for the assembly and integration of the spectrometer and imaging fore-optics sub-system components of the demonstration sensor and an operational testbed assembly complete with GUI software applications will be designed and fabricated to facilitate the collection of spectral image data. The optical properties of the demonstration system, including radiometric performance, spatial and spectral MTF, smile and keystone distortion, and other system parameters will be measured and evaluated.