Atmospheric effects on IR sensor performance. Theory and recent experimental results

The development of IR sensors with better spatial, temporal and thermal resolution pushes the necessity to revise and quantify the different atmospheric effects on sensor performance. In this paper, a high resolution IR sensor for point target detection is used as an example to show theoretically and experimentally the relevant atmospheric limitations. Special emphasis is put on the signal-to-noise ratio of point like objects in IR image sequences, on track evaluation of such objects, on the impact of optical turbulence, polarization and refraction in the track analysis.