Novel Technique of Contrast Enhancement for Uncooled Infrared Systems with Dual Fields of View optics.

Infrared focal plane array (IRFPA) is a heat image detector. At present, Thermal IRFPA (uncooled IRFPA) detectors become more suitable to replace quantum IRFPA (cooled IRFPA) in many applications due to its competitive features of power consumption, cost, and weight. Unlike cooled IRFPA, designers could utilize the absence of diaphragm aperture in uncooled IRFPA detector to design a dual field of view (DFOV) for optics with two different f_numbers (f/#). DFOV of two f/# yields a distinct contrast level when switching the FOV. All digital-contrast processing requires a post processing routine which consumes much time and resources, or offers a manual-adjustment feature which is very slow and results in a disturbing solution. This research aimed to analyze the source of the problem and proposes an ultimate technique which offers a reliable and fast solution.