A radiometric analysis of the coupling efficiency of focal plane energy to a step-index optical fiber has been carried out using Walther's generalized radiance function Bw(r,s)1 for a small, distant blackbody target imaged by aberration-free optics. A second analysis evaluates the ratio of the coupling efficiency of blackbody radiation directly incident on the focal plane (considered to arise from the telescope environment itself or, approximately, large area Earth background) to that of the distant thermal source. For a range of fiber optics parameters, this ratio is less than unity indicating that to some extent, the fiber acts to discriminate against spatially incoherent radiation.

Date Published: 19 January 1984
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 0430, Infrared Technology IX, (19 January 1984); doi: 10.1117/12.936386

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0430:
Infrared Technology IX
Richard A. Mollicone; Irving J. Spiro, Editor(s)