Visible and near-infrared laser dazzling of CCD and CMOS cameras

Imaging systems have found widespread applications in science and technology, in the civilian and military domains, ranging from detection, identification, recognition and videosurveillance. The interaction between laser light and the electro-optical sensors and optical devices present in these imaging systems is of great relevance, as they are very sensitive to intense light fluxes. From this point of view, coherent light sources such as lasers can prevent proper operation, or even cause irreversible damage to the sensors. In this work, visible and near-infrared lasers were employed to dazzle CCD and CMOS cameras, including wide field of view (WFOV) optics, commonly present in actual micro unmanned aerial vehicles (micro-UAVs). The influence of various parameters such as laser wavelength, irradiance and incidence angle on dazzling were studied. The present work contributes to a better understanding of dazzling effects on CCD and CMOS optical sensors, and will be useful in designing optoelectronic countermeasures.