Target identification performance as a function of temporal and fixed pattern noise

With the increased interest and use of staring infrared focal plane arrays, the characterization of fixed pattern noise in task performance is becoming more important. Past work includes theoretical treatments and laboratory measurements to describe the characteristics of fixed pattern noise on target acquisition performance. This is the first target acquisition experiment that describes the relative effects of fixed pattern noise and temporal noise on target identification. Static infrared tank images were processed with six different levels of fixed pattern noise and six different levels of temporal noise. A perception experiment was performed where 10 US Army soldiers were tasked to identify the tanks through the combinations of noise. Additive noise was applied in both Gaussian and uniform distributions. The results allow a direct comparison between the effects of fixed pattern noise and temporal noise on target identification.