High Resolution Uncooled Camera Achieves New Levels of Performance

Uncooled microbolometer camera cores have increased in popularity for a variety of defense and commercial applications including driver’s vision enhancement, thermal weapon sights, surveillance, thermography and more. Improvements in microbolometer technology including enhancements in both thermal sensitivity and spatial resolution, have enabled the development of a very high resolution uncooled XGA (1024x768 pixel) camera core. Due to a combination of low power electronic designs, proprietary calibration methods, and a new 17μm pixel pitch ASi microbolometer, a rugged multi-purpose XGA camera core has been developed. The result delivers far better detection range and angle-of-view performance than previous uncooled solutions with frame rates of 30Hz in XGA mode and 60 Hz in VGA mode. Despite the high performance capability, the camera core has been designed to be optimized for size, weight, and power (SWaP).

New Uncooled VGA Detector Designed for Compact, Low Power Thermal Imaging Systems

A new VGA 640x480 uncooled microbolometer detector has been developed based on 17 micron pitch amorphous silicon technology. The detector has been perfected by ULIS in collaboration with CEA/LETI, and takes advantage of all the ROIC innovations from prior generations of 25 μm pitch ASi detectors including a serial link interface for setting detector configuration, TEC-less design, low power consumption, excellent uniformity, short thermal time constant and wide dynamic range. The specific appeal of this detector is the reduction in pixel pitch that has resulted in the possibility of lower power, smaller and lower cost product designs. This enables the possibility of new applications including portable and compact thermal imaging systems. This article describes the electro-optical performance of this new IR FPA as well as design trade-offs that have resulted in wide thermal dynamic range, high resolution, excellent uniformity and high pixel operability.