Drone detection performance in the reflective bands: visible, near infrared, short wave infrared, and extended short wave infrared

Target detection and identification are well-studied problems in the visible and near infrared (IR) bands, with recent work focusing on the short wave IR (SWIR) band. The extended SWIR (eSWIR) band (2 to 2.5 μm) offers an advantage over SWIR due to increased atmospheric transmission, while keeping greater diffraction-limited angular resolution than the midwave IR and longwave IR. eSWIR should additionally improve object-sky contrast due to having lower background sky path radiance than the SWIR. An analysis of the signal-to-noise ratio and contrast for drone imaging in the reflective bands is presented and compared with a Night Vision Integrated Performance Model of drone detection performance using equivalent reflectivities. We find that imaging performance across all four bands is strongly dependent on pixel pitch and contrast.