Development Of A Panoramic Third Generation Irst: Initial Study And Experimental Work

The paper introduces the analysis carried out by Selex ES (SE) for the development of a third generation IRST system based on large format MWIR sensors, separable in blue and red bands. In the feasibility study, physical constraints have been evaluated relying on different optics and scanning options.The goal is a system based on distributed heads to cover 360 with a resolution better than 0.3 mrad and high frame rate that allow to take advantage of the typical atmospheric phenomena of the maritime environment as scintillation and super and sub refraction.Two critical aspects were investigated:(i) the setting of an adequate scanning mechanism to assure a high frame rate and (ii) the stitching of the collected images while maintaining the bit-depth so as to avoid abrupt changes of SNR at the seams between two subsequent images.