The third generation of the Wide-band Infrared Scene Projector (WISP) resistor arrays has been delivered to the Air Force Research Laboratory's Kinetic Kill Vehicle Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation facility. A critical parameter in determining the extent with which the thermal arrays simulate the real world is the radiometric and thermal resolution. The measurement of the resolution is dependent upon several factors including the input data word resolution, drive electronics resolution, system noise factors, and the measurement sensor. Several measurements were made to quantify the noise components of the WISP array and the measurement sensor to determine the limiting factor for the measurements. Due to the nonlinear transfer function between the command voltage and the projected radiance, measurements were made at several input levels to determine how the resolution varies as a function of command voltage level. Measurements were performed both with and without the spatial non-uniformity correction (NUC) applied to determine the impact of the NUC on the radiometric resolution. Based on the results of these measurements the resolution of the WISP arrays is defined in both radiometric and thermal units.

Date Published: 19 July 1999
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 3697, Technologies for Synthetic Environments: Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing IV, (19 July 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.352905

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3697:
Technologies for Synthetic Environments: Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing IV
Robert Lee Murrer Jr., Editor(s)