Remote vapor detection system and method thereof

Abstract

A remote vapor detection system and method thereof which advantageously utilizes only one, low power, single fixed wavelength laser to heat the background surface behind a vapor cloud, the constituents of which are to be detected. The heated background acts as a broad band infrared source for measuring absorption characteristics of the gas or vapor constituents and thus does not rely on prior art techniques such as back scatter or fluorescence dependent measurements which inherently require greater power or suffer from reduced sensitivity. The system of the present invention comprises a source of suitable electromagnetic radiation, such as infrared wavelength laser and a spectrally responsive receiver which may be a spectrometer or radiometer having filters at selected wavelengths corresponding to absorption and non-absorption bands of the specie of gas or vapor being detected.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.