Systematic Study Of Infrared Imaging And Detection Technology Based On QWIP-LED

QWIP-LED is a new type of device proposed for thermal imaging with high resolution and lowcost. QWIP-LED is capable of up-convert long wavelength infrared image to near infrared imagewith high MTF value and transfer the burden of high quality imaging to commercial Si-CCD ofhigh performance. Compared with traditional IRFPA, QWIP-LED can be pixelless and avoid tohybrid bonding and any thermal mismatch. As a result, the plane of QWIP-LED can be easilyextended to large scale, and the device price can be lowered significantly.In this paper, various approaches to improve light extraction efficiency of QWIP-LED isanalyzed. Photonic Crystal Slab (PCS) structure is decised to be most promising approach. Basedon simulation, an optimized PCS structure is acquired with which the light extraction efficiency canbe improved to2.32times as before.Based on the QWIP-LED technology, we study feasible schemes to implement it in a thermalimaging system. In this paper, tranditional imaging optics is chosen to realize the coupling betweenQWIP-LED and CCD. Compared with Optical Fiber Bundles scheme, the use of tranditionalimaging optics is proved to be low-cost and flexible. To make up to the low quantum efficiency ofQWIP-LED and low coupling efficiency of the imaging optical, a Electron Multiplying CCD isselected for near infrared image acquisition.In this paper, we designed EMCCD driver system based on FPGA, a14-bit precision A/Dconversion module and Gigabit Ethernet data transmission system with maximal data transmissionspeed of250Mbps.The QWIP-LED infrared imaging system is both analyzed in systematic perspective andmodule by module. Various performance parameters are analyzed and tested. Both optical andelectronic systems show high standard performance. EMCCD imaging tests show that the nearinfrared imaging system has high responsivity to low-light level target. SNR test shows that theelectrical system has high level of SNR value in normal operation mode, which satisfies originaldesign request. A QWIP-LED electroluminescence sample chip is used for QWIP-LED imaging testsince the final QWIP-LED device is not ready. Test shows that the desingned imaging system workwell. In this paper the test shceme for NETD and MTF performance of the system is also designed.