Optical IR/UV Background Monitoring System

Agiltron proposes a new uncooled infrared imaging concept that meets the stringent requirements for background fire protection monitoring under intense EMI at the large Air Force Flight Test Center anechoic facility. The approach is fully compatible with silicon IC processing and utilizes a novel combination of optical read out of a surface micro-machined detector to achieve nearly instantaneous response, large filed of view, large array size, and RF immune operation. Our approach uniquely converts invisible imagines into visible color imagines that are read-out by a conventional CCD camera. The method eliminates traditional frame rate related temporal latency and is thus capable of generating multi-spectral images at update rates to 400 Hz. The design also facilitates large field of view (FOV) detection and is simple, compact, lightweight, low power, rugged, and long operating life. During Phase I, AGILTRON has progressed in several key aspects including large chamber monitoring system design and large FOV lens design/fabrication. We have also demonstrated the feasibility of multi-color sensing from NIR, MWIR, to LWIR at detection speeds exceeding 400 frames per second while also considered UV detection. In the proposed Phase II program, we develop and deliver a background monitoring system meeting the required specifications.