An IR-background database

The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) has recently performed systematic measurements in order to establish an IR-background database. It will be used for a wide range of applications and provide a basis for the modeling of IR-background properties of Swedish terrain. Experimental data like this is also necessary for the validation of methods and programs for synthetic IR-scene simulation. The data was collected from a varied background scene at the FOI site in Linkoping. Several sensor systems were employed and the most important was a Thermovision®900 that measured for a 24-hour period once every month during a year. Simultaneously, registrations were made with one visual and one near-IR camera. For one day every season hyperspectral images were collected with ScanSpec - an imaging spectrometer designed at FOI. A weather station collected data during all the IR-measurements. The paper describes the data acquisition process, the instrumentation and the contents of the database. Some preliminary statistical analysis of the data is shown as well as an initial validation of a SensorVision IR-scene simulation.