Development and Core Technologies for Intelligent SWaP³ Infrared Cameras: A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

With the development of infrared detection and imaging technology, infrared cameras (IRCs) play an important role in many fields, such as military, industry, and civilian. Additionally, the requirements for the size, performance, and intelligence of IRCs are becoming more and more strict. Consequently, the associated research and development (R&D) of IRCs is gradually focused on the aspects of miniaturization, high performance, intelligence, low power consumption, and low cost, involving many frontier fields, including artificial intelligence, new materials, new optical systems, and electronics systems. In fact, there are continual studies on intelligent SWaP³ IRCs, but unfortunately, a systematic arrangement and analysis are lacking. Therefore, a systematical and comprehensive review for the developments and core technologies of the intelligent SWaP³ IRCs is really needed. In this paper, in terms of the aforementioned requirements, we conduct a review and analysis of current intelligent SWaP³ IRCs based on 90 literature and statistics in recent decades to provide the relevant developers with a helpful reference for facilitating the indicator optimization of intelligent SWaP³ IRCs with new developed technologies. We analyze the development of SWaP³ IRCs in the aspects of lightweight, miniaturization, low price, and high performance, including hyperspectral resolution, high spatial resolution, large field of view (FOV), and wide dynamic elaborately. Moreover, the development in low power consumption and intelligence is also discussed in detail. Additionally, we briefly summarize the primary applications of intelligent SWaP³ IRCs in military, scientific, and civil. Then, the core technologies comprising high-integration, lightweight, hyperspectral imaging (HSI), low-power consumption, as well as the realization of high performance such as high-resolution, high-frame, and wide-dynamic range of SWaP³ IRCs are discussed and analyzed in detail. Finally, we prospect for the intelligent SWaP³ IRCs that it is necessary to continuously expand the concept of SWaP³ by reliability, stability, extensibility, and safety. In addition, it is useful to embed cutting-edge technologies such as small pixel pitch array, multi-sensors fusion, and deploy intelligent algorithms to IRCs. Additionally, the improvement of the whole machine from multi-dimension such as chip, camera, and system is expected and needs to be taken more seriously. It is hoped that this paper can provide a reference for the R&D of intelligent SWaP³ IRCs in the future.