A new kind of spectropolarimeter for atmospheric sounding

Abstract

A new kind of polarization modulation is presented in this paper-sinusoidal polarization modulation. It can acquire the full linear polarization information of targets. The large advantage of this modulation is that it is very compact and with low mass and there is no moving parts in it. Moreover the demodulation algorithm is not only simple but also with high precision. It’s especially suitable for spaceborne atmosphere detecting sensor, providing a new kind of polarization modulation for it. After the incident lights passing through the modulator, it is modulated into sinusoidal with amplitude scaling with the degree of linear polarization and phase scaling with the angle of linear polarization. With a dedicated algorithm, the degree and angle of linear polarization can be acquired directly while traditional polarization modulation methods need I、Q、U、V parameters of the Stokes vector for further calculation. In this paper, theoretical and simulation analysis on spectral modulation are presented, the results of analysis point out the feasibility of this technology in theory.