Numerical calculation of apparent IR radiation of cloud

The infrared detection has been one of important approaches for aerial target detection, but the existence of clouds in the sky makes target detection difficult, so it is of great significance to research the features of infrared radiation of clouds. Combining Mie scattering theory, the calculation model of infrared radiation on the cloud appearance was put forward and this model mainly considered two parts including direct and scattering radiation. The calculation methods of direct radiation, primary scattering and multiple scattering were discussed in detail to put forward the specific methods for numerical computation. Based on the calculation model, cumulus was taken as the example to calculate its radiation of wave band of long-wave infrared and analyze its radiation characters. The calculation results showed that: both perpendicular incidence and scattering could make great contributions to apparent radiation of cloud and could not be ignored; as for the distribution of direction angles, the radiation of clouds decreased with increase of direction angles as a whole; in the aspect of spectrum distribution, spectral radiance feature of the clouds was complicated function of wave length. Finally, the calculation results were verified using clouds imaging experiment of which the result also effectively proved the correctness of the calculation model.