COMPACT, LIGHTWEIGHT, VIS-NIR-SWIR AND LWIR HYPERSPECTRAL SENSORS

The primary goal of this Phase II effort is to design, fabricate, and evaluate a new family of ultra-compact, lightweight, VIS-NIR-SWIR hyperspectral imaging sensors enabled by an innovative design form and dispersing element technology that are suitable for use on uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). This new low cost sensor technology will provide for nearly an order of mangitude reduction in system size, with improvements in system performance. An alignment and test procedure will be developed and used for the assembly and integration of the spectrometer and imaging fore-optics sub-system components of the 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. Additionally, a compact, lightweight LWIR hyperspectral imaging sensor enabled by the same innovative design form will be designed and characterized to ascertain its capabilities in meeting the design objectives and a novel LWIR dispersing element will be fabricated to predict the performance of the LWIR hyperspectral imaging sensor.