New progress on FLIR imaging system

The 3rd generation FLIR imaging system (3GD) of U.S. was summarized in this paper, which was developed corporately by the Raytheon and the Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD). Comparing with the 2nd generation FLIR system, the advanced performance of 3GD was improved by applying many new technologies, such as four field of view optical system with dual F/number, variable-aperture mechanism(VAM), high resolution dual-band MW/LWIR FPAs in 640×480 and 1280×720 formats, inner controllable thermoelectric thermal-reference, highly integrated image processing circuits and system-level simulation package. Via the public information of above technologies, their advantages, disadvantages, characteristics and application difficulties were analyzed. In the end, a brief discussion about the trend of development in modern infrared systems was given. It is useful for the development of Chinese infrared imaging system.