Abstract
An infrared (IR) sensor model is validated using experimentally derived peak pixel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) versus range for detection of either an unresolved or a resolved unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) target. The model provided estimates the time-averaged peak SNR values for the ranges used in the field collection. A mid-wave infrared (MWIR) camera and a long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera provided the measured data. Commercially available UAVs are flown along a line from the cameras to a clear sky region for background. A laser range finder measures the range at seven stopping points along the path. The data result in five ranges of unresolved target information for the MWIR camera and in four ranges for the LWIR camera. We provide details for using the data collected from the model to match the cameras used in the field collection. Also, the processing used to extract peak SNR versus range from imagery is presented.
Highlights
Low cost, commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increase the urgency of developing techniques to detect, recognize, and/or identify such targets
The sensor model discussed here is a physics-based model for the detection of unresolved targets using either the mid-wave infrared (MWIR) or the long-wave infrared (LWIR) spectral bands.[3,4,5,6]
Ensquared energy is the maximum PVF. Once both signal and noise are expressed in terms of electrons, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is the ratio of the two, which is convertible into other metrics, such as noise-equivalent irradiance, noise-equivalent temperature difference (NETD), among others, but this trade study focuses on SNR
Summary
Commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increase the urgency of developing techniques to detect, recognize, and/or identify such targets. The sensor model discussed here is a physics-based model for the detection of unresolved targets using either the mid-wave infrared (MWIR) or the long-wave infrared (LWIR) spectral bands.[3,4,5,6] The two cameras used for collecting the imagery are an LWIR camera and an MWIR camera Both are operated as fixed focal plane array devices, i.e., no scanning or dither.[7] The data collection is described in detail in a prior paper,[8] which has provided radiometrically validated, highly resolved signatures for two commercially available UAVs. The results are directly applicable to the recognition and/or identification tasks, whereas this paper. We briefly describe the sensor model, the targets, the data collection, and a comparison between the model results and the actual measured SNR as a function of range.[12,13] Experimentally, great lengths are taken to mitigate the influence of clutter, which is typically a hindrance.[14,15,16,17] This effort, overall, is a validation of the proposed model
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