Compressive Spectral Video in the LWIR

Physical Sciences, Inc. and Colorado State University will advance the technical maturity of the Compressive Sensing Hyperspectral Imager (CS-HSI) platform. The CS-HSI operates in the longwave infrared (LWIR) spectral range with a single-pixel architecture for low-cost, standoff wide area Early Warning of chemical vapor plumes. The motivation for applying CS to LWIR HSI is to eliminate the high-cost, mechanically cooled focal plane array required by traditional systems, thereby enabling wide spread deployment over a host of standoff detection applications. The objective is to produce a CS-HSI sensor which meets a unit price point of $50k in a 10lb form factor. A secondary benefit is intelligent data bandwidth management realized through use of optimized measurement and sparsity bases for chemical plume imaging. The sensor is projected to achieve spatially resolved NESR of 4×10-8 W/(cm2·ster·cm-1) at 10cm-1 spectral resolution and .031steradian/s coverage rate with 2.5mrad angular resolution. The corresponding CLmin is less than 135mg/m2 for a 3K temperature contrast.