Narcissus-Enabled Compact Thermal Hyperspectral Imager

Project Overview

Current thermal infrared hyperspectral imaging (HSI) systems require cooling the spectrally dispersing optics as well as the detector to cryogenic temperatures. To do this requires a custom dewar to house multiple optical components at high vacuum and connection to a large cryocooler to reach cryogenic temperatures. The resulting sensor system weighs hundreds of pounds and requires, at minimum, a general-aviation airplane to field. To produce a sensor with significantly reduced size, weight, and power (SWAP), a novel optical design exploiting optical narcissus was developed, allowing much of the optical system to operate at room temperature. The as-built sensor has a weight of 20 pounds and a performance level comparable to much larger sensors. The sensor has flown several demonstration flights on a drone with remote substance detection and identification. The sensor can operate for one hour on battery power, much longer then the available drone flight time.

Mission Impact

This project demonstrated a low SWAP sensor for detecting thermal infrared spectral signatures. As-built sensor SWAP was reduced by a factor of 10x to 20x compared to current thermal HSI sensors, while maintaining sub-microflick sensitivity over a multispectral bandpass. Infrared signatures can provide information on a wide variety of activities germane to the security interests of the U.S. Any process that involves IR-emitting substances (just about everything) is a potential target. The reduction in sensor SWAP will enable a significant increase in deployment opportunities, e.g., small electric drones, handheld monitoring units, and small satellites, as there are many more small platforms available than the large, manned general-aviation and larger platforms currently used for these sensors.