HyMIRSAP: Hypersepctral Mid-wave Infrared Sensor for Attritable Platforms

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology’s steady development arc has led to its continued proliferation across Department of Defense for a variety of applications.  While substantive development has taken place across the visible/infrared spectrum, most fielded applications are leveraging visible, short-wave infrared (SWIR) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera technology for HSI applications.  Mid-wave infrared (MWIR) sensors, in contrast, are the infrared band of choice for broadband day/night infrared imaging due to the availability of a variety of high performance (i.e. high quantum efficiency/low dark current) detector materials, and shorter wavelengths relative to the LWIR (allowing for spatial resolution targets to be met with comparatively smaller optics).  This allows for a wide trade-space of broadband MWIR sensor design enabling integration into a wide-variety of size, weight and power (SWaP) constrained payloads.  While MWIR HSI shows promise a variety of applications such  as aircraft plume characterization, camouflage detection, explosives detection, greenhouse gas detection and other enhancements to traditional broadband ISR imagers, deployment of MWIR HSI sensors has been limited due in part to the complex spectral phenomenology’s in the MWIR band.  As such, we anticipate high performance, compact MWIR HSI imagers will be needed to fill the existing dearth of high performance, low SWaP options.   To fill this capability gap, Spectrum Photonics seeks to develop a low C-SWaP MWIR HSI payload suitable for deployment in an attritiable UAS platform suitable for deployment at altitudes greater than 20 kft.  The proposed Hyperspectral Mid-wave Infrared Sensor for Attritable Platforms (HyMIRSAP) will contain a compact, MWIR hyperspectral imager, a stabilizer, a computational payload, and associated data processing electronics to generate real-time information suitable for downlink to ground control.  The HSI capability of our novel compact MWIR system will leverage Spectrum’s Ultra Compact Hyperspectral Imaging System (UCHIS) technology.    By utilizing high performance InSb cameras in concert with compact spatial interferometry, a high performance, low C-SWaP MWIR HSI sensor can be developed which meets the requisite performance and SWaP goals for deployment on an attritable UAS.