Novel Photonic Infrared Scene Generator

This proposal addresses an unconventional photonic approach for the next generation of IR scene generator that provides all-aspect, realistic IR threat simulation for infrared controlled and guided missile weapons systems and trackers. The new IR scene generator design provides intrinsic advantages in speed, waveband width, appearance temperature, resolution and contrast, cross talk, background noise, reliability, and cost as compared with the competitive approaches. The proposed key technologies can be employed to develop near UV and UV scene generation system as well. The device design overcomes all the major shortcomings of the current devices. The proposed integrated and cooled IR scene generation design is compatible with a 5-axis motion simulator and cold background application. The program leverages recent progress on IR light guiding and piezoelectric optical switching development. In the Phase I program, we have successfully demonstrated a functional 5x5 photonic switch based IR scene generator. This experimental result definitively verified our innovative design concept. Phase I work also proved the materials viability. Based on this significant progress, we propose to further develop this high performance IR scene generation technology towards commercialization by constructing a fully functional large-array 128x128 element scene generator display system as a demonstration vehicle.