SWIR Cameras: Surveying The Market Ahead

By Antonios Vengel, VP of Business Development,
Nova Sensors (A Teledyne Majority Owned Company)

The short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) camera market is in the early stage of development relative to cameras in other wavelengths within the electromagnetic spectrum, generating sales revenues of approximately $50 million annually, worldwide. There are a few companies making SWIR cameras in the market and even fewer making the detector material: indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs).

Because SWIR cameras are relatively new to the warfighter community, a concept of operations (CONOPS) — a military document that describes the specifications for a system — remains unwritten for defense customers. To meet this requirement, the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has chartered an Integrated Product Team with members from all of the services, led by the Army’s Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directors (NVESD; Fort Belvoir, VA) to help define the CONOPS for SWIR, including requirements for deployment of the hardware.

The benefit of SWIR imaging is its low power consumption. It uses a thermoelectric cooler (TEC), or no cooler if the dark current is low enough, while still providing good enough imagery in low-light conditions to eliminate the need for a cryogenic cooler. The collected image is composed of reflected light as opposed to thermal emission; therefore, SWIR provides some of the same benefits of a visible camera. And because it images further into the IR spectrum (typically 0.9 to 1.7 µm), SWIR allows for visibility of battlefield lasers operating at 1.064 µm — one very important feature that SWIR cameras provide to the warfighter.

As seen in Laser Focus World online, published Dec. 7, 2011; http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2011/12/ir-detectors-swir-cameras-surveying-the-market-ahead.html