Thermal scene projectors using microemitters

Abstract

A number of techniques are under development for creating dynamic IR scenes for testing IR imaging systems. Comparison of these techniques may be misleading if appropriate performance parameters are not used. One straightforward method is the thermal emission from microemitters fabricated in an array. The small mass leads to good response times if crosstalk between elements and to any substrate can be limited. Silicon micromachining can create good performance in arrays of this type because of the excellent thermal isolation of the elements