• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.97-103
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• 2017

Thermal imaging is mainly used in military equipment required for night observation. In particular, technologies of uncooled thermal imaging detectors are being developed as applied to low-cost night observation system. Many system integrators require different specifications of the uncooled thermal imaging camera but their development time is short. In this approach, EOSYSTEM has developed a small size, TEC-less uncooled thermal imaging camera module with $32{\times}32mm$ size and low power consumption. Both domestic detector and import detector are applied to the EOSYSTEM's thermal imaging camera module. The camera module contains efficient infrared image processing algorithms including : Temperature compensation non-uniformity correction, Bad/Dead pixel replacement, Column noise removal, Contrast/Edge enhancement algorithms providing stable and low residual non-uniformity infrared image.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.300-305
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• 2018

The uncooled microbolometer thermal sensor for low cost and mass volume was designed to target the new infrared market that includes smart device, automotive, energy management, and so on. The microbolometer sensor features 80x60 pixels low-resolution format and enables the use of wafer-level vacuum packaging (WLVP) technology. Read-out IC (ROIC) implements infrared signal detection and offset correction for fixed pattern noise (FPN) using an internal digital to analog convertor (DAC) value control function. A reliable WLVP thermal sensor was obtained with the design of lid wafer, the formation of Au80%wtSn20% eutectic solder, outgassing control and wafer to wafer bonding condition. The measurement of thermal conductance enables us to inspect the internal atmosphere condition of WLVP microbolometer sensor. The difference between the measurement value and design one is $3.6{\times}10-9$ [W/K] which indicates that thermal loss is mainly on account of floating legs. The mean time to failure (MTTF) of a WLVP thermal sensor is estimated to be about 10.2 years with a confidence level of 95 %. Reliability tests such as high temperature/low temperature, bump, vibration, etc. were also conducted. Devices were found to work properly after accelerated stress tests. A thermal camera with visible camera was developed. The thermal camera is available for non-contact temperature measurement providing an image that merged the thermal image and the visible image.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.241-249
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• 2017

This paper presents the design and evaluation of the optical system for an uncooled thermal-imaging camera. The operating wavelength range of this system is from $7.7{\mu}m$ to $12.8{\mu}m$. Through optimization, we have obtained a LWIR (Long Wave Infrared) optical system with a focal length of 5.44 mm, which consists of four aspheric surfaces and two diffractive surfaces. The f-number of the optical system is F/1.2, and its field of view is $90^{\circ}{\times}67.5^{\circ}$. The hybrid lens was used to balance the higher-order aberrations, and its diffraction properties were evaluated by scalar diffraction theory. We calculated the polychromatic integrated diffraction efficiency, and the MTF drop generated by background noise. We have evaluated the thermal compensation of a LWIR fixed optical system, which is optically passively athermalized to maintain MTF performance in the focal depth. In conclusion, these design results are useful for an uncooled thermal-imaging camera.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.189-195
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• 2013

An F/1.2 infrared optical system that involves two aspheric BD-2 lenses and an aspheric diffractive surface was designed over $8-14{\mu}m$ with a field angle of $15.2^{\circ}$. The system may be used in uncooled cameras and is analyzed using beam synthesis propagation (BSP). The diffractive surface is modeled as a physical surface with a given thickness, and results are compared with those obtained by conventional methods, such as the exit-pupil method and a method which superposes diffraction orders.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.624-628
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• 2013

With the recent development of less-costly uncooled detector technology, expensive optics are among the remaining significant cost drivers in the thermography camera. As a potential solution to this problem, the fabrication of IR lenses using chalcogenide glass has been studied in recent years. We report on the molding and evaluation of a ultra-precision chalcogenide-glass lens for the thermography camera for body-temperature monitoring. In addition, we fabricated prototype thermography camera using the chalcogenide-glass lens and obtained the thermal image from the camera. In this work, it was found out that thermography camera discerned body-temperature between 20 and $50^{\circ}C$ through the analysis of thermal image. It is confirmed that thermography camera using the chalcogenide-glass lens is applicable to the body-temperature monitoring system.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.89-101
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• 2015

This paper proposes a statistical model of 3-D positions when tracking moving targets using the uncooled infrared (IR) stereo camera system. The proposed model is derived from two errors. One is the position error which is caused by the sampling pixels in the digital image. The other is the timing jitter which results from the irregular capture-timing in the infrared cameras. The capture-timing in the IR camera is measured using the jitter meter designed in this paper, and the observed jitters are statistically modeled as Gaussian distribution. This paper derives an integrated probability distribution by combining jitter error with pixel position error. The combined error is modeled as the convolution of two error distributions. To verify the proposed statistical position error model, this paper has some experiments in tracking moving objects with IR stereo camera. The 3-D positions of object are accurately measured by the trajectory scanner, and 3-D positions are also estimated by stereo matching from IR stereo camera system. According to the experiments, the positions of moving object are estimated within the statistically reliable range which is derived by convolution of two probability models of pixel position error and timing jitter respectively. It is expected that the proposed statistical model can be applied to estimate the uncertain 3-D positions of moving objects in the diverse fields.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.106-116
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• 2023

In this paper, we designed a coaxial dual camera incorporating two optical systems-one for the visible rays and the other for far-infrared ones-with the aim of capturing images in both wavelength ranges. The far-infrared system, which uses an uncooled detector, has a sensor array of 640×480 pixels. The visible ray system has 1,945×1,097 pixels. The coaxial dual optical system was designed using a hot mirror beam splitter to minimize heat transfer caused by infrared rays in the visible ray optical system. The optimization process revealed that the final version of the dual camera system reached more than 90% of the fusion performance between two separate images from dual systems. Multiple rigorous testing processes confirmed that the coaxial dual camera we designed demonstrates meaningful design efficiency and improved image conformity degree compared to existing dual cameras.

• 전자공학회논문지 IE
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.32-39
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• 2011

The output image of the uncooled thermal infrared camera is difficult the identification of target because of the limited dynamic range and the various noises. Retinex algorithm based on the theory of the human visual perception is known to be effective contrast enhancement technique. However, the image quality is insufficient when it is adopted to the narrow dynamic range image as the infrared image. In this paper, we propose the revised retinex algorithm to enhance the contrast of the infrared image. To improve the contrast enhancement performance, we designed the new dynamic range compression function instead of log function. To reduce the noise and compensate the loss of edge, we added the contrast compensation procedure in the MSR image generation process. According to the output picture comparing and numerical analysis, the proposed algorithm shows the better contrast enhancement performance and the more suitable method for the infrared image enhancement.