Overview of Computational Testbed for Evaluating Electro-Optical/Infrared Sensor Systems

The U. S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) developed a near-surface computational testbed (CTB) for modeling geo-environments. This modeling capability is used to predict and improve the performance of current and future-force sensor systems for surface and near-surface threat detection for a wide range of geo-environments. The CTB is a suite of integrated models and tools used to approximately replicate geo-physical processes such as radiometry, meteorology, moisture transport, and thermal transport that influence the resultant signatures of both natural and man-made materials, as perceived by the sensors. The CTB is designed within a High Performance Computing (HPC) framework to accommodate the size and complexity of the virtual environments required for analyzing and quantifying sensor performance. Specifically, as a rule-of-thumb, the size of the scene should encompass an area that is at a minimum, the size of the spatial coverage of the sensor. This HPC capability allows the CTB to replicate geophysical processes and subsurface heterogeneity with high levels of realism and to provide new insight into identifying the geophysical processes and environmental factors that significantly affect the signatures sensed by multispectral imaging, near-infrared, mid-wave infrared, long-wave infrared, and ground penetrating radar sensors. Additionally, this effort is helping to quantify the performance and optimal time-of-use for sensors to detect threats within highly heterogeneous geo-environments by reducing false alarms from automated target recognition algorithms.