Leuven, Belgium, 11 June 2012 — Xenics, Europe’s only developer and manufacturer of advanced InGaAs detector solutions and covering the complete infrared wavelength, is proving the breadth of its in-house design and production capabilities at Eurosatory 2012. Xenics will announce a new family of high resolution OEM modules based on the same interface for both SWIR and LWIR, outdoor camera systems and multispectral image fusion technology, all for demanding applications such as night vision (active and passive), UAV (defense, surveillance and fire-fighting), homeland security and search and rescue missions (SAR). Xenics exhibits in Hall 6, Booth 280.
XenicsCores for government system integrators
XenicsCores is a new family of high-resolution infrared OEM modules offering easy integration and excellent image quality. The first two members are the Xenics Short Wave module XSW-640 and the Xenics Thermal Module XTM-640. These compact uncooled OEM modules are light-weight, low-power consuming and easy-to-integrate in the customer’s application via the universal QTE connector. Longer Detection, Recognition and Identification distances are possible thanks to the small size of the pixels of the detector.
The SWIR module XSW-640 is based on an uncooled InGaAs array of 640 by 512 pixels with 20 μm pixel pitch and measures only 45 x 45 x 24 mm. It is optimized for the detection of shortwave infrared radiation between 0.9 and 1.7 μm wavelength which can be extended into the visible spectrum down to 0.6 μm. With a sensitivity of less than 90 noise electrons, the XSW is optimized for active and passive night vision.
The LWIR module XTM-640 is based on an uncooled microbolometer array of 640 by 480 pixels with 17 μm pixel pitch and measures only 45 x 45 x 32 mm. It is optimized for the detection of thermal infrared radiation between 8 and 14 μm wavelength and achieves a high thermal sensitivity of 50 mK.
Small size, weight and power (SWaP) are essential for portable applications and missions of unmanned airborne vehicles (UAV) because they prolong their autonomous operation. Without lens the XTM weights only 95 g and the XSW only 70 g. Power consumption of the XSW (with additional TE1 cooling for enhanced sensitivity) is 3 W while the XTM needs only 1.65 W.
As the only SWIR European supplier Xenics is able to offer worldwide high frame rates up to 50 Hz for the XTM and 100 Hz for the XSW. With their integrated powerful readout electronics, advanced non uniformity compensation and image processing algorithms they provide uniform and crisp IR images over a broad application range in defence and security and under all weather conditions.
See more with image fusion
OEM modules and cameras from Xenics cover the full wavelength spectrum from SWIR over MWIR to LWIR. For special cases it can be advisable to use two cameras for different spectral ranges. Their images are overlaid, where parts of the images with the highest contrast take precedence. This technique allows to considerably increasing the scene dynamics in terms of depth of digitization, contrast and detection/recognition capabilities. The XSW-640 SWIR module is well suited for image fusion applications as it can be easily cooperated with the XTM-640 companion thermal module for LWIR. Due to their small sizes the parallax is minimized. The small size and potential detached sensor head operation allows also for parallax free operation behind one single objective and a beam splitter.
