NIR night vision systems use active near infrared (NIR) illumination and an NIR sensitive camera to improve driver's range of sight at night when high beam can not be used as there is on-coming or on-going traffic. This means that for automotive NIR night vision systems special cameras have to be developed that combine low-reflection lens units with high dynamic range image sensors (imagers) for intensity ranges of over 100 dB. The paper discusses these challenges in more detail and shows new approaches for the development of an automotive series NIR night vision system. The optical requirements for a NIR night vision system are based on the illumination conditions of a typical night scene: lens unit with low reflections; high dark sensitivity of the imager; high dynamic intensity range of imager. In addition the following automotive requirements have to be fulfilled: small camera packaging for easy integration; good image quality over whole temperature range; good image quality over lifetime; compliant to ESD-regulations; climatic and environmental requirements; applicability for daylight usage for additional camera-based functions (e.g. lane departure warning); low price. On the concept side, several solutions are conceivable for NIR-illuminators: - 'Standard' lighting modules with continuously emitting halogen bulbs and a special filter to block the visible light. - Use of pulsed NIR-LEDs. - Use of pulsed NIR-Laser. One of the most challenging road scene for the lens unit is an on-coming vehicle on a dark country road. When using a typical consumer lens unit, three typical disturbing effects may appear. First, heavy reflections lead to multiple representations of light sources, so that every headlamp of an on-coming car is visible several times in the image. A second critical point of most lens units is the image sharpness, described by the modular transfer function (MTF). The image sensor (imager) as the opto-electrical converter is another key element of a night vision camera. After grabbing the raw image with the imager a signal processing unit can realise various functions: Noise reduction; Edge enhancement; Non-linear intensity compression.


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    Title :

    Automotive NIR night vision systems: Challenges, product features and customer benefit


    Additional title:

    Automobile NIR-Nachtsichtsysteme: Herausforderungen, Produktmerkmale und Kundennutzen


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2004


    Size :

    9 Seiten, 4 Bilder, 4 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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