Optically heated blackbody emitter for dynamic infrared scene generation

Abstract

The infrared image conversion chip based on optical heating technique has advantages of wide spectral range and high spatial resolution, which is appropriate as an infrared target simulator. At present, the dynamic infrared image, which is physically generated by infrared target simulator, can achieve 8-bit grayscale level with 100 Hz refresh rate. In this paper, we demonstrate an optically heated blackbody emitter (OHBE) for dynamic infrared scene generation to further improve the grayscale level of generated infrared image. The OHBE utilizes the thermal inertness of radiation layer material to integrate the visible light energy, and generates infrared images with 10-bit grayscale value within 1.25 ms. And the infrared images can be collected in a holding time of 3.75 ms in each refresh cycle. The temperature range of the generated infrared image is 108 K, and the temperature resolution corresponds to a unit grayscale value is 0.1 K. The OHBE proposed has been successfully applied to an infrared target simulator.