Innovations in infrared scene simulator design

The MIRAGE (Multispectral Infrared Animation Generation Equipment) Dynamic Infrared Scene Projector, is a joint project developed by Santa Barbara Infrared Inc. and Indigo Systems Corporation. MIRAGE is a complete infrared scene projector, accepting 3-D rendered analog or digital scene data at its input, and providing all other electronics, collimated optics, calibration and thermal support subsystems needed to stimulated a unit under test with high-fidelity, dynamic infrared scenes. At the heart of MIRAGE is a 512×512 emitter array, with key innovations that solve several problems of existing designs. The read-in integrated circuit (RIIC) features “snapshot” updating of the entire 512×512 resistive array, thus solving synchronization and latency problems inherent in “rolling-update” type designs, where date is always changing somewhere on the emitter array at any given time. This custom mixed-signal RIIC also accepts digital scene information at its input, and uses on-board D/A converters and individual unit-cell buffer amplifiers to create analog scene levels, eliminating the complexity noise, and limitations of speed and dynamic range associated with external generation of analog scene levels. The proprietary process used to create the advanced technology micro-membrane emitter elements allows a wide choice of resistor and structure materials while preserving the dissipation and providing a thermal time constant of the order of 5 ms