A signal-to-noise performance of an imaging Michelson interferometer based on corner cubes is modeled and experimental results are presented. The influence from the background radiation of the uncooled sensor is explained. The noise equivalent spectral radiance is determined in the 700 to 1300  cm^−  1 range at two spectral resolutions using blackbody sources. The performance of the sensor system is tested on a scene at an average temperature of 19°C. From these results, the performance is given in terms of number of samples and spectral resolution. The performance model is used to predict the sensor performance at different scene temperatures.