The target thermal structure is playing a stronger role in modeling the performance of autonomous IR seekers to acquire and track targets. The impact of the target thermal structure on seeker and sensor acquisition has been previously reported. In this paper, the impact of the target's thermal structure on the acquisition and tracking capability of autonomous imaging IR seekers using staring focal plane arrays is assessed. This paper examines both the magnitude of the thermal structure, referred to as the vehicle's thermal standard deviation, and the distribution of the thermal structure, referred to as the power spectral density (PSD). The vehicle's thermal PSD is important in that it determines how much structure the seeker will see given the number of resolvable pixels the seeker has on the target. PSDs that reflect actual armored targets as well as simple warm bodies with a single hot spot are explored. PSDs that are necessary for targets to optimally match the background clutter are also addressed. In addition to the impact of the target's thermal structure, the impact of aliasing effects that can be present in staring seekers is discussed. Relative advantages of trading off resolution versus eliminating aliasing effects are presented.
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