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What Is the EO-IR System?
What Is the EO-IR System?
The ability to detect enemy threats at all times — day or night, in any weather conditions — is the key to keeping military personnel safe.eo ir system EO/IR, or electro-optical infrared systems, enable our warfighters to remain fully alert against enemy attacks.eo ir system In this blog, we will explore what eo ir system is and how it works to help our soldiers stay on top of enemy threats in even the most challenging conditions.
The EO/IR (or electro-optical infrared) sensor technology used in military platforms is comprised of an array of detectors and computing architectures that span the visible and infrared wavelength spectrum, which includes the near infrared (near IR), short wave infrared (SWIR), and long wave infrared (LWIR).eo ir system In addition to enabling military personnel to see, they also allow them to track enemy vehicles in a variety of environments, including fog, rain, smoke, or complete darkness.eo ir system
Unlike laser or searchlight systems, EO/IR sensors are passive; they don’t emit their own light and instead depend on either natural or artificial illumination to illuminate the target.eo ir system In the case of natural illumination, this can come from sunlight or moonlight (even sky shine), while artificial illumination may be provided by a searchlight or a target’s own emission of IR radiation.eo ir system However, these photons must travel through a hostile medium, the atmosphere, which can refract or absorb them depending on temperature and composition.
In many cases, the environment imposes limits on how well an EO/IR sensor can perform, and these limits are referred to as resolution and sensitivity.eo ir system Resolution refers to how small an object or feature can be seen, while sensitivity determines how low a signal can be before it is overwhelmed by noise.eo ir system For this reason, EO/IR sensor performance is measured by a metric called noise equivalent irradiance, or NEI.
For some EO/IR applications, such as missile launch detection, the precise size and temperature of the target matter little; the important information is simply how much energy it is radiating in the SWIR and LWIR spectral bands.eo ir system This can vary over orders of magnitude, from the engine in a small UAV to the explosion in the engine of a long range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).eo ir system
To determine how much energy the target is emitting, the sensor must be capable of measuring its radiance in the SWIR and LWIR wavelengths.eo ir system Early IR sensors were based on photon counters, which count the number of photons that reach the detector.eo ir system More recent, uncooled EO/IR systems are often bolometers that measure the radiance of the signal in terms of watts.
Despite their limitations, EO/IR sensors are highly valuable for military platforms.eo ir system The ability to operate in a wide range of conditions — from total darkness to dense fog — means that they can keep warfighters protected at all times. In fact, the Trenton 3U BAM XRS server is designed to provide a high-resolution image in even the most challenging conditions and is an example of how modern EO/IR technology is helping our troops stay safe around the globe.
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