The division-of-amplitude polarization navigation angle sensor design

Abstract

Micro Inertial Measurement Unit (MIMU) can navigate automatically without any external information but it is unable to complete a long-time high-accuracy navigation task because its error will accumulate with time increase. So it needs assistance of other navigation methods. Because polarization navigation has good stability, well invisibility, and the yaw error is not divergent. So it can be used to adjust the output of MIMU. This paper presents a novel polarization navigation sensor, which uses division-of-amplitude method. The sensor obtains the azimuth angle by measuring the Stokes vector. This paper designs the structure of the polarized light collection device, and discusses the data acquisition program. The result of experiment shows that the sensor can collect the information of polarized light and the azimuth angle can be gotten effectively.