Silicon-On-Sapphire GPS System On A Chip

This proposal outlines a program to develop a complete Stokes polarization imaging system. Although conventional imaging techniques have undergone fairly advanced levels of development, enabling low-level light detection, IR imaging, and high-resolutionimaging all at rapid frame rates, the techniques nevertheless are fundamentally constrained to detection of only the intensity and color of light. Polarization imaging would allow additional information to be accessed, which is not possible byconventional imaging. Through the detection of polarization properties of light, in addition to the conventional intensity based information, polarization imaging would add a new dimension to imaging.The proposed polarization based imaging system is expected to significantly enhance the capabilities of object identification and differentiation, which will be very useful in target acquisition and identification particularly in difficult environments.For example, certain polarization states of light have been shown to be impervious to the effects of scattering by aerosols (smoke, fog, etc.). Polarization imaging can take advantage of this effect to enhance imaging through obscuring media. In addition,the light transmitted or reflected from an object has a polarization signature that offers means for identification of the material characteristics of the target object (e.g., ice on a wing surface).