Long-term vision for air-to-air infrared search-and-track sensors

摘要

An ideal infrared search and track sensor will cover 4 $pi steradians, but will have diffraction limited resolution for clutter rejection, noise control, and raid count. In addition it will have an imbedded active sensor that will complement the clutter rejection, provide instantaneous object range, and will provide other object recognition. This sensor will have no moving parts and will be very producible. Such an ideal sensor would be very sensitive, so it can be used to detect and track low temperature targets at long range. While the complete goals specified above are beyond intermediate term state of the art an approach does exist to satisfy these goals in the intermediate term. This approach is to use a coarse resolution passive sensor and use the active sensor to eliminate false alarms. A random access pointing capability is required from the active sensor. Optical space fed phased array technology is discussed as a method of providing that random access pointing capability.