Optical sensor employing motion compensated integration-device and process

Abstract

A motion compensated integration system and process for scanning a field and producing images of one or more densely filled wavebands has a moveable platform, an optical sensor, and optical sensor line-of-sight measuring device, and a processor. The optical sensor is mounted to the moveable platform and is made up of a telescope that is in functional relationship with a focal plane array. The focal plane array comprises one or more sets of detectors capable of receiving one or more wavebands and producing focal plane array data of the wavebands, respectively. The optical sensor line-of-sight measuring device is capable of producing optical sensor line-of-sight movement data. The processor is capable of receiving the focal plane array data and the optical sensor line-of-sight movement data and producing output images representing the wavebands, respectively. The system and process may normalize the data to account for border regions of the stabilized arrays. The focal plane array has a plurality of sets of detectors and the sets of detectors are intermingled to form a pattern. The pattern may be stripes, checkers, zigzags, or random. The moveable platform of the motion compensated integration system is a component of a missile, the telescope, a satellite, a space vehicle, an air vehicle, an aircraft, a ground vehicle, or a watercraft. As this invention provides inertially and electronically stabilized waveband arrays, the system and the process does not use scan mirrors, gimbals, or position pickoffs.