A new temperature compensation method for microbolometric focal plane array

Based on the analysis of the physical thermal model for a microbolometer under pulse bias, a new temperature compensation method for microbolometric focal plane array is proposed to compensate the substrate temperature fluctuation in microbolometric array. The self-heating and infrared responding voltage expressions of the microbolometer under pulse current bias are derived from the heat balance equation of the physical thermal model for the microbolometer, and these two expressions indicate that the microbolometer self-heating and infrared voltage responsivity expressions are dependent on the substrate temperature of the microbolometer with some other constant characteristic parameters. Through the obtained expressions, different pulse bias currents are provided to the microbolometer and its corresponding blind element at different substrate temperatures to get the same voltage responsivity of the microbolometer at different ambient temperatures. The proposed temperature compensation method can be utilized for a microbolometric focal plane array with low-power consumption and high temperature-resolution.