Evaluation on detecting ability of electro-optical systems to space targets

In detecting process, the detecting ability is not only affected by the detecting signal-to-noise ratio(SNR), also by the quality of the detecting image, and the detecting ability evaluating method in existence is only based on the SNR. To offset the deficiency of the evaluating method in existence, a new evaluation on detecting ability of the electro-optics system is put forward, which combines the detecting SNR and system modulation transfer function(MTF), and it can also give the quantitative analysis of the effect of the atmosphere, the aberration and the motion. The new evaluating method was used to simulate an electro-optical system under different conditions. The simulation indicates that the atmosphere, the aberration and the motion can affect the detecting ability seriously, and the motion reduces the detecting ability nearly 1 magnitude. The detecting ability can quantitatively studied with our method, which provides a scientific basis for optimization design of electro-optical systems.