The Missile Defense Transfer Radiometer (MDXR) is designed to calibrate infrared collimated and flood sources over the fW/cm² to W/cm² power range from 3 μm to 28μ m in wavelength. The MDXR operates in three different modes: as a filter radiometer, a Fourier-transform spectrometer (FTS)-based spectroradiometer, and as an absolute cryogenic radiometer (ACR). Since 2010, the MDXR has made measurements of the collimated infrared irradiance at the output port of seven different infrared test chambers at several facilities. We present a selection of results from these calibration efforts compared to signal predictions from the respective chamber models for the three different MDXR calibration modes. We also compare the results to previous measurements made of the same chambers with a legacy transfer radiometer, the NIST BXR. In general, the results are found to agree within their combined uncertainties, with the MDXR having 30 % lower uncertainty and greater spectral coverage.

Date Published: 25 July 2013
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 8707, Technologies for Synthetic Environments: Hardware-in-the-Loop XVIII, 870709 (25 July 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2015982

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8707:
Technologies for Synthetic Environments: Hardware-in-the-Loop XVIII
James A. Buford Jr.; R. Lee Murrer Jr.; Gary H. Ballard, Editor(s)