Measurement and analysis of infrared atmospheric aerosol blur

摘要

Infrared image quality can be degraded by atmospheric aerosol scattering. Aerosol interactions are dependent uponthe atmospheric conditions and wavelength. Measurements of an edge target at range in the LWIR under hot humidweather provided a blur on the image plane, which is characterized by an MTF. In this experiment, the edge spreadfunction, measured at range, was differentiated to obtain the line spread function and transformed into a MTF. Bydividing the total measured MTF by the imager and turbulence MTFs, the aerosol MTF was obtained. Numericalanalysis performed using MODTRAN and existing known scattering theory was compared with the experimentalresults. The measured and numerical results demonstrated a significant aerosol MTF suggesting that the aerosolMTF should be included in sensor performance analysis.