Passive, Active Stokes Polarization Imaging System

"Seekers for BMD interceptors must acquire, track, discriminate, and determine aimpoints in the presence of difficult physical and countermeasure environments. Polarization imaging has the strong potential to provide additional information overconventional radiance imaging sensors. Polarized hardbodies can be discriminated from unpolarized plumes, debris, and wakes and RV's can be discriminated from decoys that have different materials and geometries. A number of instruments have beenfabricated to take advantage of this phenomenology. Most of these instruments suffer from polarization channel IFOV misregistration either temporally or spatially that can lead to polarization artifacts. An architecture is required that eliminates themisregistration in a small, rugged, and cost-effective sensor package. In this SBIR, SY Technology proposes to develop a novel imaging polarimeter architecture. The architecture acquires multiple polarization channels simultaneously by projecting multiple images of the target onto a single focal plane array using division ofaperture techniques. This approach produces multiple images that are co-boresighted and that eliminates relative movement of the polarization images due to thermal or vibration loads. Designs and performance evaluations will be developed for the UV,visible, and LWIR. A detailed design for one of the wavebands will enable rapid development of the sensor in Phase II. The development