Approaches To High Performance SWIR Lens Design

Right now, the world is waking up to the advantages of short-wave infrared (SWIR) imaging for some very good reasons. Indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) focal plane arrays (FPAs) are advancing technically all the time. Prices are also falling as volumes increase and fab processes start to mature. These and many other factors mean that high-definition imaging, using a high performance SWIR lens, is now possible in affordable cameras that can be used for a variety of applications in fields as diverse as food quality control, waste recycling, industrial and border security, seeing through smoke or mist.

However, there is a problem. Currently, the pace of development of affordable high performance SWIR cameras is not being matched by the equivalent high performance SWIR lenses. The result is that the image quality is now more likely to be limited by the lens rather than the camera.

In this post, I explain the technical challenges in more detail and how these can be addressed effectively.