Red glow of infrared radiation sources: Treatment in CIE-xyz-colour space

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Red glow of infrared radiation sources: Treatment in CIE-xyz-colour space

Kesseler, Wolfgang / Könning, Thomas / Locher, Jürgen

Infrared radiation sources are in everyday experience recognised as invisible. This holds for infrared remote controls for example. However, in dark-adapted conditions the human observer will recognise a red glow, if the power density of the infrared source is high enough. This is an effect, which turns out to be of interest within automotive lighting due to the infrared sources of active night vision systems. To get such an active night vision system to work one has to use infrared sources, which provide a main beam characteristic to the system. Since infrared radiation is supposed to be invisible, neither the driver, nor drivers of oncoming traffic should be able to recognise these radiation. But exactly this proves to be wrong. Under certain circumstances an oncoming driver recognizes the infrared beam as a red lamp. According to the traffic regulations this is forbidden in front of the vehicle and countermeasures are necessary. These circumstances raise the importance of knowledge about the colorimetric treatment of infrared radiation within the automotive lighting systems. The article explains the reason for this sensory perception and how this fits to the standardized light theory, for example the V(Lambda) curve. Based on this approach the phenomena can be easily integrated in the lower colorimetric theory. Consequently an approach is developed which enables the notification of a colour location of such sources within the CIE-xyz-colour space or the CIE xy colour triangle respectively.