Uncooled infrared microbolometer arrays for Earth remote sensing

摘要

The recent development of high performances uncooled infrared microbolometer arrays with detection limit (Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference) as low 50 mK (f/1-60 Hz)~(1-4) offers a new challenge for the design of space instruments for Earth remote sensing. In this paper, we present results obtained on a 256 * 64 amorphous Silicon microbolometers array~4 and on a 320 * 240 Vanadium Oxide (VO_x) microbolometers array~(1-3), from electro-optical characterizations performed at Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales. The goal of these measurements is to derive the performances of these arrays in order to study the feasibility of Earth remote sensing instruments using uncooled infrared microbolometer arrays. We find that a detection limit of ～0.16 K could be achieved at low spatial resolution, where the VO_X microbolometer array is more adapted, due to relatively large time constant (～23 ms). At medium spatial resolution, a detection limit of ～0.5 K could be achieved, with the amorphous Silicon microbolometer array.