Research on the controlling thermal defocus aberration for the infrared imaging system based on wavefront coding

We describe the application of wavefront coding technique for infrared imaging system to control thermal defocus. For traditional infrared imaging system, athermalization is necessary to maintain imaging performance which may increase complexity and cost of the imaging system. Wavefront coding includes a phase mask at the pupil which can re-modulate wave front so as to produce an encoded image. After digital processing, the system is insensitive to defocus. In this paper, the combination of wavefront coding technique and infrared imaging system has been discussed. We report here the optic design of the wavefront coding IR system based on Zemax. The phase mask is designed to ensure that the modulation transfer function (MTF) is approximately invariant in the range of working temperature. Meanwhile, we designed three IR systems to put up contrast experiments. System one and two are designed to compare the influence before and after the insertion of phase mask. System three is designed to compare the imaging performance before and after reducing lens in wavefront coding IR system. The simulation results show that the infrared imaging system based on wavefront coding can control thermal defocus in a temperature varying from -60oC to 60 oC, at the same time the weight and cost of optical elements are reduced by approximately 40%.