Compressive sensing architecture advances infrared camera design

New detector materials such as quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, and graphene have the potential to enhance the performance of infrared (IR) cameras within short development cycle due to compressive sensing (CS) architectures. High-resolution CS cameras can use a few- or even a single-pixel detector, as they eliminate the need for a high-pixel-count focal-plane array (FPA), enabling alternative detector materials to be incorporated at an earlier stage than in an FPA design. The CS architecture captures compressed data as the image is being taken, while in a conventional camera the large amount of raw data acquired necessitates immediate compression to store or transmit that data. A CS camera directly acquires random projections without first collecting the N pixel values and can obtain an image with a single-detection element while measuring the image far fewer times than the number of pixels.