Performance simulation model for a new MWIR camera for missile plume detection

Abstract

We report realistic performance simulation results for a new MWIR camera. It is designed for early detection of long distance missile plumes over few hundreds kilometer in the distance range. The camera design uses a number of refractive optical element and a IR detector. Both imaging and radiometric performance of the camera are investigated by using large scale ray tracing including targets and background scene models. Missile plume radiance was calculated from using CFD type radiative transfer algorithm and used as the light source for ray tracing computation. The atmospheric background was estimated using MODTRAN utilizing path thermal radiance, single/multiple scattered radiance and transmittance. The ray tracing simulation results demonstrate that the camera would satisfy the imaging and radiometric performance requirements in field operation at the target MWIR band.