Research on the measurement of mid-wavelength infrared average atmospheric characteristics

Mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) average atmospheric radiation transfer characteristics include atmospheric transmittance and path radiation, which are usually used for the correction and extraction of the data captured by mid-infrared imaging system (3~5μm). The infrared thermal imager and standard blackbody source were taken as measurement instruments, which could be used to carry out the experiments about the measuring of the average atmospheric characteristics. A multi-point measurement method is proposed, using least squares to analyze multi-point measurement data to obtain the optimal values. The multi-point method and the traditional two-point method are respectively compared to PcModWin, a famous atmospheric radiation transfer software. The results show that the error of multi-point method is less than 5% according to PcModWin, and the multi-point method is mostly better than two-point method.