Infrared Focal Plane Array Imaging System Characterization by Means of a Blackbody Radiator Francisca Parra 1,2,3 , Pablo Meza 1,2 , Carlos Toro 1,2 , and Sergio Torres 1,2 1 Departamento de Ingenier´ ıa El´ ectrica, Universidad de Concepci´on, Casilla 160-C, Concepci´ on, Chile 2 Center for Optics and Photonics, Universidad de Concepci´on, Concepci´on 3 Aeronautical Polytechnic Academy Chilean Air Force Santiago, Chile Abstract. Infrared (IR) Focal plane array (IRFPA) cameras are nowa- days both, more accessible and with a broad variety in terms of detectors design. In many cases, the IRFPA characterization is not completely given by the manufacturer. In this paper a long wave 8-12 [μm] mi- crobolometer IRFPA is characterized by means of calculating the Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference (NETD) and the Correctability per- formance parameters. The Correctability parameter has been evaluated by using a black body radiator and Two-Points calibration technique. Also, the Transfer Function of the microbolometer IR camera has been experimentally obtained as well as the NETD by the evaluation of ra- diometric data from a blackbody radiator. The obtained parameters are the key for any successful application of IR imaging pattern recognition. 1 Introduction Currently, the development of IR imaging sensors have been such that the market has been flooded with different types of IR cameras, each one with different features as presented in [1]. The main difference between these cameras is in the sensor type used for detecting the infrared radiation. Depending on the interaction nature between the detector material and the IR radiation, the photo-detectors are classified on intrinsic, extrinsic, photo- emissive, and quantum well detectors [2]. The second class of IR detectors is composed by thermal detectors, where the incident radiation is absorbed and it changes the material temperature, that change modifies some physical properties as resistivity to generate an electrical signal output. In contrast to photo-detectors, the thermal detectors typically operate at room temperature. One of the most popular thermal detectors is the amorphous silicon (a-Si) microbolometer as presented in [3] and as any detector, they are affected by many type of noise sources. In spite of the the first bolometer was designed in 1880, according to [4], the development release to this technology was under classify military contacts, so C. San Martin and S.-W. Kim (Eds.): CIARP 2011, LNCS 7042, pp. 105–112, 2011. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011