• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.174-181
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• 2004

Various kinds of systems, that can do target recognition and position detection simultaneously by using infrared sensing detectors, have been developed. In this paper, the detection system TRSS (Thermal target Recognition by Spiral Scanning) adopts linear array shaped uncooled IR detector and uses spiral type fast scanning method for relative position detection of target objects, which radiate an IR region wavelength spectrum. It can detect thermal energy radiating from a 9 m-size target object as far as 200 m distance. And the maximum field of a detector is fully filled with the same size of target object at the minimum approaching distance 50 m. We investigate two types of lens systems. One is a singlet lens and the other is a doublet lens system. Every system includes one aspheric surface and free positioned aperture stop. Many designs of F/1.5 system with ${\pm}5.2^{\circ}$ field at the Efl=20, 30 mm conditions for single element and double elements lens system respectively are compared in their resolution performance [MTF] according to the aspheric surface and stop position changing on their optimization process. Optimum design is established including mechanical boundary conditions and manufacturing considerations.

• Food Science and Industry
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.26-36
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• 2018

Terahertz (THz) represents the portion of the electromagnetic radiation between the microwave and the infrared region and is within the frequency range of 0.1-10 THz. The ability of THz waves to pass through a wide variety of packaging materials, combined with their ability to characterize the molecular structure of many substances makes it an attractive tool for the application of food quality and safety management. This review provides current information on application of THz spectroscopy/imaging technology for food quality and safety management. The THz spectroscopy/imaging technology has been shown to be useful for detecting foreign bodies, vitamin/moisture, pesticides, antibiotics, melamine etc. However, major barriers to the adoption of THz spectroscopy/imaging for food quality and safety management include THz signal loss in heterogeneous food matrices, high costs of sources and detectors, and absence of a library for the wide group of food compounds. Further research is needed to overcome these barriers.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.115-119
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• 2022

A readout circuit for a mercury-cadmium-telluride (MCT)-amplified mid-wave infrared (IR) photodetector was realized and applied to noncontact chemical agent detectors based on a quantum cascade laser (QCL). The QCL emitted 250 times for each wavelength in 0.2-㎛ steps from 8 to 12 ㎛ with a frequency of 100 kHz and duty ratio of 10%. Because of the nonconstant QCL emission power during on-duty, averaging the photodetector signals is essential. Averaging can be performed in digital back-end processing through a high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) or in analog front-end processing through an integrator circuit. In addition, it should be considered that the 250 IR data points should be completely transferred to a PC during each wavelength tuning period of the QCL. To average and minimize the IR data, we designed a readout circuit using the analog front-end processing method. The proposed readout circuit consisted of a switched-capacitor integrator, voltage level shifter, relatively low-speed analog-to-digital converter, and micro-control unit. We confirmed that the MCT photodetector signal according to the QCL source can be accurately read and transferred to the PC without omissions.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.41-45
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• 2010

Miniature Joule-Thomson refrigerators have been widely used for rapid cooling of infrared detectors, optoelectronic device, and integrated circuits of micro electronics. The typical J-T refrigerator consists of the recuperative heat exchanger with the double helical tube and fin configuration, J-T nozzle, a mandrel, Dewar and a compressed gas storage bottle. In this study, to predict the thermodynamic behaviors of the refrigerator with a compressed gas storage bottle during the cool-down time, numerical study of transient characteristics for a J-T refrigerator was developed. A simplified transient one.dimensional model of the momentum and energy equations was simultaneously solved to consider the thermal interactions of the each component of the refrigerator. To account for effects of the thermal mass of the solid, the heat capacities of the tube, fins, mandrel and Dewar are considered. The results show the charged gas pressure of the gas storage bottle has significant effects on the performance of the J-T refrigerator. At the elevated gas pressure of the gas storage bottle, the large capacity of the compressed gas storage does not need to get the fast cool-down performance of the J-T refrigerator in the cool-down stage.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.55-59
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• 2009

Miniature Joule-Thomson refrigerators have been widely used for rapid cooling of infrared detectors, probes of cryosurgery, thermal cameras, missile homing head and guidance system, due to their special features of simple configuration, compact structure and rapid cool-down characteristics. The thermodynamic performance of J-T refrigerator highly depends on the hydraulic and heat transfer characteristics of the recuperative heat exchanger. The typical recuperative heat exchanger of the J-T refrigerator has the double helical tube and fin configuration. In this study, effectiveness-NTU approach was adopted to predict the thermodynamic behaviors of the heat exchanger for the J-T refrigerator. The thermodynamic properties from the REFPROP were used to account the real gas effects of the gas. The results show the effect of the operating conditions on the performance of the heat exchanger and refrigerator for the given heat exchanger. The influences of mass flow rate and the supply pressure on the effectiveness of heat exchanger and the ideal cooling capacity are discussed in details.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.233-244
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• 2012

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and the Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin are developing a near infrared wide-band high resolution spectrograph, immersion grating infrared spectrometer (IGRINS). The compact white-pupil design of the instrument optics uses seven cryogenic mirrors, including three aspherical off-axis collimators and four flat fold mirrors. In this study, we introduce the optomechanical mount designs of three off-axis collimating mirrors and one flat slit-viewer fold mirror. Two of the off-axis collimators are serving as H and K-band pupil transfer mirrors, and are designed as system alignment compensators in combination with the H2RG focal plane array detectors in each channel. For this reason, the mount designs include tip-tilt and parallel translation adjustment mechanisms to properly perform the precision alignment function. This means that the off-axis mirrors' optomechanical mount designs are among the most sensitive tasks in all IGRINS system hardware. The other flat fold mirror is designed within its very limitedly allowed work space. This slit-viewer fold mirror is mounted with its own version of the six-point kinematic optics mount. The design work consists of a computer-aided 3D modeling and finite element analysis (FEA) technique to optimize the structural stability and the thermal behavior of the mount models. From the structural and thermal FEA studies, we conclude that the four IGRINS mirror mounts are well designed to meet all optical stability tolerances and system thermal requirements.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.138-143
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• 2016

The designed and fabricated millimeter-wave security screening system receives radiation energy from an object and a human body. The imaging system consist of sixteen array antennas, sixteen four-stage LNAs, sixteen detectors, an infrared camera, a CCD camera, reflector, and a focusing lens. This system requires high sensitivity and wide bandwidth to detect the input thermal noise. The LNA module of the system has been measured to have 65.8 dB in average linear gain and 82 GHz~102 GHz in bandwidth to enhance the sensitivity for thermal noise, and to receive it over a wide bandwidth. The detector is used for direct current (DC) output translation of millimeter-wave signals with a zero bias Schottky diode. The lens and front-end of the millimeter-wave sensor are important in the system to detect the input thermal noise signal. The frequency range in the receiving sensitivity of the detectors was 350 to 400 mV/mW at 0 dBm (1 mW) input power. The developed W-band imaging system is effective for detecting and identifying concealed objects such as metal or plastic.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2018

The characterization of detectors installed in space- and ground-based instruments is important to evaluate the system performance. We report the development of a detector performance test system for astronomical applications using the Andor iKon M CCD camera. The performance test system consists of a light source, monochromator, integrating sphere, and power meters. We adopted the Czerny-Tuner monochromator with three ruled gratings and one mirror, which covers a spectral range of 200-9,000 nm with a spectral resolution of ~1 nm in the visible region. Various detector characteristics, such as the quantum efficiency, sensitivity, and noise, can be measured in wide wavelength ranges from the visible to mid-infrared regions. We evaluated the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) detector performance test system by using the performance verification of the Andor iKon-M CCD camera. The test procedure includes measurements of the conversion gain ($2.86e^-/ADU$), full well capacity ($130K\;e^-$), nonlinearity, and pixel defects. We also estimated the read noise, dark current, and quantum efficiency as a function of the temperature. The lowest measured read noise is $12e^-$. The dark current at 223 K was determined to be $7e^-/s/pix$ and its doubling temperature is $5.3^{\circ}C{\pm}0.2^{\circ}C$ at an activation energy of 0.6 eV. The maximum quantum efficiency at 223 K was estimated to be $93%{\pm}2%$. We proved that the quantum efficiency is sensitive to the operating temperature. It varies up to 5 % in the visible region, while the variation increases to 30 % in the near-infrared region. Based on the comparison of our results with the test report by the vendor, we conclude that our performance test results are consistent with those from the vendor considering the test environment. We also confirmed that the KASI detector performance test system is reliable and our measurement method and analysis are accurate.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.35-44
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• 2012

Most recent infrared (IR) sensors have a focal-plane array (FPA) structure. Spatial non-uniformity of a FPA structure, however, introduces unwanted fixed pattern noise (FPN) to images. This non-uniformity correction (NUC) of a FPA can be categorized into target-based and scene-based approaches. In a target-based approach, FPN can be separated by using a uniform target such as a black body. Since the detector response randomly drifts along the time axis, however, several scene-based algorithms on the basis of a video sequence have been proposed. Among those algorithms, the state-of-the-art one based on Kalman filter uses one-directional warping for motion compensation and only compensates for offset non-uniformity of IR camera detectors. The system model using one-directional warping cannot correct the boundary region where a new scene is being introduced in the next video frame. Furthermore, offset-only correction approaches may not completely remove the FPN in images if it is considerably affected by gain non-uniformity. Therefore, for FPN reduction in IR videos, we propose a joint correction algorithm of gain and offset based on bi-directional warping. Experiment results using simulated and real IR videos show that the proposed scheme can provide better performance compared with the state-of-the art in FPN reduction.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.472-477
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• 2017

Oil spills cause a lot of damage to the environment. Oil destroys the water environment and ecosystem in a very short period of time once they are contaminated by it, it takes a lot of time to recover from the contamination and the cleaning process is very difficult. Therefore, oil detectors are greatly needed as they can monitor any oil spills over the sea, rivers, and lakes. There are two kinds of technology available for detecting oil, viz. the contact and non-contact types. The former is based on the use of the conductivity, capacitance and microwaves, while the latter employs infrared, UV, laser, optic and radar technologies. As there are also various hurdles in the measuring of oil on water, such as the presence of waves, refraction of light, temperature and saltiness, it is imperative to select the right oil detector which is appropriate for the specific environment. In this study, a contact type oil detector is developed, which can be used in oil related industries, such as refineries, petrochemical companies, and power generation stations. The detector is made up of the sensor module, which floats on the water, and the controller which processes the signal coming from the sensor module and displays it. It is designed in such a way that the existence of oil is detected through the sensor and the change in the permittivity is observed to determine the volume and type of spilled oil.