Ning LIU, Qian CHEN, Guo-hua GU, and Xiu-bao SUI

National Defense Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Engineering, NUST, Nanjing 210094, China

(Received July 15, 2011; Accepted October 3, 2011)

A new adaptive technology applied for adjusting the output dynamic range of microbolometer has been described in this paper. This technology is based on the temperature calculation of the scene target. According to the microbolometer, when the temperature of the scene target becomes too high/low to exceed or almost exceed the maxim/minimum resolution of the system, it will lower the temperature resolution of the image. When this happens, this technology will calculate the raw image data, determine the temperature level of the scene target, and rearrange the crucial bias voltages which relates to the dynamic range of microbolometer. This technology adjusts the dynamic range of the output signal and enriches the image details. This technology has greatly improved the performance of the system, elevated the real-time ability, and lowered the total power consumption.

Key words: microbolometer, adaptive, dynamic range, temperature calculation