Verification of radiation background rates in an IR sensor system.
Abstract
The space radiation environment is known to cause interfering backgrounds in orbiting infrared sensor systems. The paper presents on-orbit data and compares them to event rate calculations for an actual system. Practical approximations are used, where necessary, to analyze the real hardware sensor system. The latest NASA radiation models and cosmic ray models are incorporated to generate incident charged particle spectra at various orbital locations. Radiation transport computer programs are used to calculate the charged particle transmissions and bremsstrahlung production for selected incident spectra. Calculation of radiation interaction with detectors resulted in event rates and pulse height distributions for the background events. The overall agreement between the data and the predicted event rates due to the radiation background is found to be excellent. The methodologies developed are directly applicable to new sensor designs.
- Publication:
-
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
- Pub Date:
- December 1976
- DOI:
- 10.1109/TNS.1976.4328577
- Bibcode:
- 1976ITNS...23.1775H
- Keywords:
-
- Background Radiation;
- Extraterrestrial Radiation;
- Infrared Detectors;
- Radiant Flux Density;
- Remote Sensors;
- Amplitude Distribution Analysis;
- Bremsstrahlung;
- Pulse Amplitude;
- Radiation Shielding;
- Radiation Spectra;
- Instrumentation and Photography