Near-infrared forest fire detection concept.

A system concept is described for a pushbroom airborne optical fire detection instrument operating in the visible and near-infrared spectral regions. In the design concept, several detection modules are used simultaneously, each having a camera lens, beam splitter, spectral filters, silicon linear array, InGaAs linear array, and signal processing. Calculations indicate that dual-wavelength signal processing should allow cool (600 K) incipient fires as small as 0.1 m in extent to be identified against the expected background of diffuse and specular sunlight.