ABSTRACT
At present, vanadium oxide and amorphous silicon (a-Si) microbolometers are technologies of choice for uncooled thermal imaging. The military continues to explore imaging systems where performance criteria are the most important factors: pixel count, sensitivity, and response time. However, their sensitivity limitations [1] and the still-significant prices encouraged many research teams to explore other infrared (IR) sensing techniques with the potential for improved performance with reduced detector costs. Lower-cost technologies are necessary to pursue consumer applications for more widespread “mass-consumable” applications, such as private property alarm surveillance, household fire detectors in addition to smoke detectors, occupancy detectors for intelligent building automation, pedestrian collision prevention on pedestrian crossings, road traffic monitoring for smart traffic management, simple thermal imaging for automotive to prevent pedestrian or animal collision, wildfire monitoring systems, and so on. Recently, thermal imaging modules for less than $1,000 have been produced. It means a tenfold reduction in costs, compared with the approximate price for current IR imaging systems (see Table 11.1).
