Compact high resolution multi-aperture LWIR imaging system

Abstract

LWIR (Long Wave Infrared) imaging systems are built intensely less in size by concurrently amassing respective low resolution pictures with multi small aperture optics instead gathering a common high resolution picture with a broad aperture optics. For instance, in Thin Observation Module using Bound Optics (TOMBO) lenslets, collection of multiple small lenses is used to replace the single macro lens typically used in LWIR systems. In the TOMBO arrangement, mini lenses are the imaging elements. Proposed LWIR concept is built on a collection of focal arrays passing various portions of the complete field of view (FOV). Signal processing methods are used to generate the complete picture by stitching the pictures of various arrays. A focal plane array of a thermal detector format 1024×768 is broken up into 4 squares of 512 × 384 pixels each in a 2 × 2 array. Four lenslets form four separate images of the scene on the detector, each slightly offset from the neighbor. High resolution algorithm is applied to put together a complete resolution image of the picture. The use of separate channels advantages to a less complex lens manufacturing, thus resulting in reduced fabrication cost. This paper describes the design of miniaturized LWIR-camera imaging. We also made a comparison between the conventional aperture and multi aperture imaging systems.