A Bi-Spectral Microbolometer Sensor for Wildfire Measurement
Denis Dufour, Loïc Le Noc, Bruno Tremblay, Mathieu Tremblay, Francis Généreux, Marc Terroux, Carl Vachon, Melanie Wheatley, Joshua M. Johnston, Mike Wotton, P. Topart
Abstract
This study describes the development of a prototype bi-spectral microbolometer sensor system designed explicitly for radiometric measurement and characterization of wildfire mid- and long-wave infrared radiances. The system is tested experimentally over moderate-scale experimental burns coincident with FLIR reference imagery. Statistical comparison of the fire radiative power (FRP; W) retrievals suggest that this novel system is highly reliable for use in collecting radiometric measurements of biomass burning. As such, this study provides clear experimental evidence that mid-wave infrared microbolometers are capable of collecting FRP measurements. Furthermore, given the low resource nature of this detector type, it presents a suitable option for monitoring wildfire behaviour from low resource platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or nanosats.