• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.577-585
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• 2010

This paper is a part of developing a software that predicts the infrared signal emitted from a ground object by considering solar irradiation. The radiance emitted from a surface can be calculated by using the temperature and optical characteristics of the surface object. The bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is defined as the ratio of reflected radiance to incident irradiance. It is a very important surface reflection property that decides the reflected radiance from the object. In this paper, the spectral radiance received by a remote sensor over the mid-wave infrared(MWIR), and the long-wave infrared(LWIR) regions are computed and compared each other for several different materials. The results show that the optical surface properties such as the BRDF and the emissivity of the object surface can play a major role in generating the infrared signatures of various objects, and the largest infrared signal may reach up to 10 times the smallest one when the infrared signals obtained from a flat plate with different surface conditions under the sun light.