Measurement of internal stray radiation of a thermal infrared spectrometer based on temperature variation

The level of internal stray radiation is an important criterion to evaluate the performance of a thermal infrared spectrometer. In this study, a novel method is proposed and evaluated to measure the internal stray radiation of a thermal infrared spectrometer based on temperature variation. The proposed method was used to measure the internal stray radiation values of an existing instrument. First, two output gray value curves were constructed for a single spectral channel in a cryogenic detector at two different spectrometer temperatures based on radiometric calibration measurements. Subsequently, the gray value and radiation flux of the internal stray radiation of the spectrometer were calculated. In addition, the internal stray radiation data measured at different spectral channels and different integration times were used to verify and evaluate the proposed method. Results show that the proposed method is valid, and the standard deviations of the various internal radiation values of the tested spectral channels and the various integration times are 3.47% and 1.46%, respectively. The proposed method is adaptable, flexible, and efficient.