Appeal No. 2006-1049
Application No. 09/667,826
11. An infrared imaging system as set out in claim 10, wherein said means
for biasing comprises a constant current source coupled to said microbolometer
detector elements.
16. An infrared imaging system as set out in claim 8, wherein said current
sources provide substantially constant currents of 2NI0, respectively, when coupled
into said readout circuit by said means for selectively connecting, where I0 is a
fixed current value and N is a nonnegative integer.
20. An infrared imaging system as set out in claim 19, wherein said offset
correction logic means receives said offset correction values from said means for
storing and [provide] provides them to said means for correcting in response to
said timing signals.
24. An infrared imaging system, comprising:
an infrared focal plane array comprising:
a plurality of infrared detector elements arranged in an array;
a readout circuit electrically coupled to the plurality of detector elements
and comprising a plurality of readout cells equal in number to the plurality of
detector elements, means for biasing the plurality of detector elements so as to
provide separate detection signals corresponding to each detector element in the
array, in response to incident infrared radiation and means for separately correcting
offsets in the detection signals provided from the plurality of elements in the
detector array to compensate for nonuniformities in the detector elements, wherein
said means for correcting comprises an offset correction circuit in each readout cell
of the readout circuit and wherein each offset correction circuit comprises a
plurality of parallel connected circuit elements and means for selectively
electrically connecting said circuit elements into the readout cell in response to [a]
the stored offset correction value corresponding to said readout cell; and
output means for providing the corrected detection signals as an output
of the focal plane array;
means for storing a plurality of offset correction values corresponding to the
plurality of detector elements; and
means for providing the offset correction values to said means for
correcting.
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