<title>Design and performance of the ULTRA 320x240 uncooled focal plane array and sensor</title>

The ULTRA (Uncooled, Low cost, Technology Reinvestment Alliance) Consortium, consisting of the Honeywell Technology Center of Honeywell Incorporated, the Autonetics Missile Systems Division of Rockwell International Corporation, Inframetrics Incorporated, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, has been formally working together over the past year in an effort to develop, manufacture and sell industrial and military sensors and components incorporating silicon microbolometer uncooled focal plane array (UFPA) technology. Towards that end, Rockwell has been actively engaged in developing the UFPA component, with assistance from Honeywell, with the intention of being a merchant supplier of the UFPA. Inframetrics has been developing subsystems required to construct and characterize a prototype sensor, and NJIT is designing a Multi-Wavelength Imaging Pyrometry system around the performance of the uncooled prototype sensor. TRP Office funding administered by ARPA has been key to the significant advances made over the course of the year in this program. This paper will describe both the UFPA component specification and the prototype sensor. It will give a architectural overview of the detector array, with the anticipated performance characteristics. Multiplexer design and simulation, and array processing, will be addressed. A description of the array packaging, interface requirements, and unique design considerations will be provided. Anticipated and actual component performance will be explained and contrasted. The background of the sensor development will be presented. An overview of the camera architecture will be given, with some discussion of trade-offs in subsystem design of the sensor. Specific emphasis is placed on the radiometric evaluation of the sensor.