Abstract
This paper is a part of developing a computer code that can be used to generate synthetic IR images by calculating the outgoing infrared signal from objects. To predict the reflected component that is a part of the outgoing IR signal, such as those components reflected from the target surface by the solar and sky irradiations, it is necessary to calculate the complicated BRDF values for considering the directional surface reflection characteristics. Since the calculation of reflectance using the BRDF requires a large amount of computation time due to the hemispherical integral term, it is frequently restricted in applying for a real-time prediction of IR signal. In this research, the simplified method for calculating IR reflected component has been proposed by replacing the integral terms into two parts, a directionally uniform component and a step function representing the specular component, to reduce computation time. The proposed method is proved to result in very fast calculation of the BRDF (up to 600 times faster calculations) for most of the surfaces with minimal loss of the accuracy.