SWIR range performance prediction for long-range applications

Long range imaging systems have applications in vessel traffic monitoring, border and coastal observation, and generic surveillance. Often, sign reading and identification capabilities are required, and medium or long-wave infrared systems are simply not the best solution for these tasks, because of the low scene contrast. Among reflected light imagers, the short-wave infrared has a competitive advantage over the visible and near-infrared spectrum, being less affected by path attenuation, scattering and turbulence. However, predicting a SWIR system long range performance still represents a challenge because of the need of an accurate atmospheric modelling. In this paper, we present the key limiting performance factors for long range applications, and how we used popular atmospheric models to extract the synthetic simulation parameters needed for range performance prediction. We then present a case study for a long range application, where the main requirement is to read a vessel name at distances greater than 10km. The results show a significant advantage of SWIR over visible and near-infrared solutions for long range identification tasks.