Visidyne has identified two new and innovative concepts for reducing false alarms in Overhead Non-imaging InfraRed (ONIR) surveillance systems. We propose to conduct system and engineering trade studies to provide a basis for selecting one or both of these concepts for future system upgrades. Initial simulations for both concepts show potential for orders of magnitude reduction in false exceedance rates for conditions pertinent to a surveillance system. One concept, called the Spatially Coincident Two-Color Sensor (SCOTS), employs standard spatial or temporal filtering for background suppression in two pass bands that are subject to different source phenomenologies: one band (SWIR) subject to solar scatter and the other band (MWIR or MLWIR) subject to thermal emissions. The key innovative step for this concept is a subsequent spatially coincident filtering that takes advantage of the fact that the clutter exceedances in the two bands are not, in general, co-located at geospatial positions on the earths surface and therefore, not co-located in the sensors angular space. The second concept, called the Polarization Discrimination Sensor (PODS), employs a polarization measurement in an SWIR band to discriminate between target signal, which is not polarized, and background clutter which, for large areas of troublesome glint regions, is polarized.
Keywords: INFRARED, SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS, BACKGROUND CLUTTER, CLOUDS, POLARIZATION
