Surveillance arrangement including a television system and infrared detector means
First Claim
1. An airborne surveillance arrangement comprising an aircraft carrying a television system including television camera means for viewing a target area of the surface over which the aircraft is to fly lying ahead of said aircraft and a television display arrangement coupled to said television camera means for displaying the target area viewed by said television camera means, and an array of individual infra-red detectors imaged into space to view part of said target area to provide brighten-up signals for said display to highlight heat emitting targets in said display target area, said infra-red detector array being imaged into space with a directivity which is fixed in the direction of the flight path of said aircraft.
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Abstract
The invention provides a surveillance arrangement, and in particular an airborne surveillance arrangement, in which a television display of a scene is brightened up, by means of infra-red detectors, to emphasize heat emitting targets.
In one example of airborne surveillance system, a linear array of infra-red detectors is arranged to view part of a scene viewed by a television camera, with the same horizontal field of view at a desired target range. In front of the array of detectors a light chopper is provided so that the output of each detector is a modulated carrier. The output of each detector is applied to a store, via individual impedance transformers, narrow bandpass filters and demodulators. Between each demodulator and the store, individual sharp out-off low pass filters and threshold detectors may be provided to provide a degree of discrimination against spurious responses. The store is read-out under the control of a sequence timing unit which is synchronized with the synchronizing signal generator of the television camera and the video output of the latter is mixed with the output from the store prior to application to a display unit so that the display provided is a scene of an area towards which the aircraft is flying with heat emitting targets highlighted.
35 Citations
11 Claims
- 1. An airborne surveillance arrangement comprising an aircraft carrying a television system including television camera means for viewing a target area of the surface over which the aircraft is to fly lying ahead of said aircraft and a television display arrangement coupled to said television camera means for displaying the target area viewed by said television camera means, and an array of individual infra-red detectors imaged into space to view part of said target area to provide brighten-up signals for said display to highlight heat emitting targets in said display target area, said infra-red detector array being imaged into space with a directivity which is fixed in the direction of the flight path of said aircraft.
- 10. A mobile surveillance arrangement comprising a television system including television camera means for viewing a scene and a television display arrangement coupled to said television camera means for displaying the scene viewed by said television camera means, and an array of individual infra-red detectors imaged into space to view part of the same scene as that viewed by said television camera means to provide brightenup signals for the scene displayed by said television display arrangement to highlight heat emitting targets in said part of said displayed scene, said infra-red detector array being imaged into space with a directivity which is fixed in a coordinate direction corresponding to the direction of movement of said mobile surveillance arrangement relative to said scene.
Specification