Realistic infrared sequence generation by physics-based infrared target modeling for infrared search and track

Abstract

Infrared search and track pursues the detection of sea-skimming infrared targets incoming from long distance. This paper presents a realistic synthetic target simulator for the development of infrared target detection and tracking algorithms. The proposed simulator consists of a 2-D background modeling part and a 3-D infrared target modeling part. Real infrared background images are used for the realistic modeling of background. Synthetic infrared target images are obtained by the consecutive processing of 3-D geometric modeling and radiometric modeling of targets according to target types, target distances, and atmospheric transmissivity. The experimental results validate the realistic modeling of the proposed method by comparing real observation sequence data.