Polarized enhanced sensor

Detection, Recognition and Identification (DRI) of surface vessels on the ocean surface at long stand-off is challenging due to wave clutter, poor target contrast, scatter from aerosols, and other maritime phenomena.  PST specializes in multi-modal imaging, combining intensity, polarization and spectral sensing, and has experience applying this technology for DRI in maritime environments. Current Polarization sensing techniques do an excellent job detecting under-resolved targets, but does not significantly improve recognition and identification because polarization signatures of target are not unique.  The target polarization signature depends on several factors including target aspect angle, camera declination angle, sun angle and cloud cover.  For these reasons, different targets can have the same polarization signature.             The goal of this SBIR is to add capability to existing polarimetric cameras to improve DRI, particularly recognition and identification.  PST will partner with the University of Dayton (UD) to use Point Spread Function (PSF) Engineering techniques to improve the resolving power of polarimetric cameras and provide target depth information.  Polaris will also add a spectral channel to a polarimetric camera.  The multi-modal data will be formatted into a “target state vector” that includes broadband intensity, polarization, spectral intensity, target depth information, target angular extent, and possibly target velocity, acceleration.  The added information in the target state vector will significantly improve recognition and identification of under-resolved targets.