AIRIS — THE CANADIAN HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGER; CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

The Defence Research and Development Canada Agency has successfully completed a Technology Demonstration Program to assess the military utility of airborne hyperspectral Imagery. This required developing a sensor, the Airborne Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AIRIS), and collecting in-flight imagery data. AIRIS was designed as a flexible instrument using a Fourier Transform spectrometer with a spectral resolution ranging from 1 to 16 cm⁻¹, wide spectral coverage (2 to 12 microns), and different optical configurations. This paper provides a description of AIRIS and discusses examples of the spectral images collected during one air-trial. Emphasis is put on images of sub-pixel targets. Processing AIRIS data is labor intensive and can only be performed during post-trial analysis. Hardware and software modifications to AIRIS will implement a real-time processing capability over the next three years. These modifications will enable the instrument to output radiometrically calibrated digital spectrograms. These spectrograms will then be processed in real-time to output target detection and identification for selected target types.