Variable Coherence Polarimetry

Monostatic Measurement of the Polarized BRDF

Oscar G. Rodrguez-Herrera and J. Scott Tyo Motivation & Impact Remote sensing tasks require the ability to model the electromagnetic scattering of random objects, and the polarized BRDF (pBRDF) is the common way of doing that. Measurement of the pBRDF is a cumbersome process that requires the ability to control the directions of incidence and observation, as well as the ability to control the illumination and analysis polarization states (Fig. 1). Variable Coherence Polarimetry (VCPol) was developed at the ASL as a way of monostatically measuring the scattering properties of a material. Instead of scanning the angles of incidence and observation, the VCT controls the coherence properties of the incident radiation allowing tomographic reconstruction of the pBRDF. The ASL has proposed two methods to control the coherence and polarization properties that we will investigate in this program. z Description The polarized bidirectional reection distribution function (pBRDF) is widely used to characaterize the scattering properties of materials and to model remote sensing engagements. Knowledge of a material pBRDF allows the signatures within a scene to be estimated by adding information about the source-target-sensor geometry. BRDF is typically measured in the laboratory using goniometric setups, and is used as an input to scene modeling tools like DIRSIG and Figure 2 : Setup of a VCPol system in the lab. The xed illuminator has the ability to control the FASSP in order to model en- coherence and polarization properties of the excitation. gagement scenarios. While the The xed receiver is essentially a Stokes polarimeter. pBRDF (or its scalar cousin, While shown as bistatic here, VCPol works perfectly the unpolarized BRDF) is gen- well in a monostatic conguration. erally used as a modeling tool, it is also a powerful identier that can be used to discriminate objects of interest in complicated scenes. An experimentally measured scattering distribution could be compared with a pBRDF library in a manner similar to what is done in hyperspectral imaging. Unfortunately, remote measurement of pBRDF is simply not possible in most real-world scenarios where the target is far away and not under the control of the sensing system. The Advanced Sensing Laboratory at the University of Arizona has developed a theoretical framework to get around the requirement to vary both the directions of incidence and observation in order to infer the pBRDF. Variable coherence polarimetry (VCPol) 1 is a vector generalization of Variable Coherence Tomography (VCT), developed by Baleine and Dogariu 2 . By carefully controlling the structure of the coherence and polarization properties of the incident radiation, the statistics of a materials scattering potential matrix can be deduced. Instead of requiring the geometric control indicated in Fig. 1, we can use a simplied setup as shown in Fig. 2 where the source and receiver are xed. The source system will include a coherence generator that allows the user to scan through a range of coherence states, essentially performing speckly interferometry; by controlling the coherence between two speckles in the illumination, the coherence of the scattered light from those speckles can likewise be controlled. While VCPol has the ability to be a powerful sensing tool, there are a number of key technical challenges that must be overcome, and these form the basis of the proposed research program: What methods can control the mutual coherency matrix structure that are adequate for inferring the BRDF? Can the BRDF and pBRDF inferred from monostatic probing using VCPol in the laboratory match library measurements to perform identication? Is it possible to scale the theoretical predictions and laboratory results of VCPol and VCT up to make similar measurements at range? What are the hardware, software, and bandwidth requirements of the source and receiver that enable VCPol?

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Figure 1 : BRDF Measurement setup.

The proposed program would develop the fundamental building blocks necessary to implement VCPol in a remote sensing system. There are many challenges to overcome in the research, but success would provide the ability to characterize the BRDF from remote, monostatic measurements. Contact Information
Oscar Rodrguez orh@optics.arizona.edu J. Scott Tyo tyo@optics.arizona.edu http://www.optics.arizona.edu/asl

Variable Coherence Polarimetry

Monostatic Measurement of the Polarized BRDF
Oscar G. Rodrguez-Herrera and J. Scott Tyo Mathematical Underpinnings of VCPol The second-order statistics of the optical eld are completely described by the mutual coherence matrix
=
Ex (r1 , t )Ex (r2 , t + ) Ey (r1 , t )Ex (r2 , t + ) Ex (r1 , t )Ey (r2 , t + ) Ey (r1 , t )Ey (r2 , t + )

Ongoing Research Challenges Experimentally validate the ability of proposed methods to generate the desired mutual coherence properties The ASL has proposed two methods to control the mutual coherence properties. The rst is a modied Mach-Zender polarimetric interferometer 1 , while the second exploits the propagation relations discussed in Fig. 3 3 . After construction of the systems, we will require a exible mutual coherence matrix sensing system to estimate . One proposed system is shown in Fig. 4.
SRC IRIS CCD

where Ex and Ey are the transverse components of the optical eld assumed to be propagating in the z -direction. This matrix captures the full spatial and temporal coherence of the optical eld, and carries information about the entwined coherence and polarization states. While computation of involves correlation of the elds at two dierent points r1 and r2 , conventional optical detectors measure only the local optical intensity. This means that all well-known imaging and sensing systems including multispectral, hyperspectral, polarization, LIDAR, and passive imagers measure particular projections of , and the choice of projection is dictated by the optics in the path (gratings, polarizers, pinholes, etc.). VCPol 1 and its predecessor VCT 2 manipulate the properties of of the illumination in order to directly probe the properties of a particular material described by the scattering tensor k2 (r), F(r) = 4 e where is the local anisotropic electric susceptibility of the e scattering object. The innovation of VCPol is that the secondorder statistics of F can be inferred from remote, single-point, monostatic measurements of the coherency matrix 1 J(s ) = 2 F(r1 )(r1 , r2 )F(r2 ) F G (r )d r1 d r2 , r where G (r ) is the free space Greens function. The ability to control the incident coherence properties described by allow the development of a tomographic reconstruction whereby many dierent projections of F are taken by changing the coherence, but all measurements are made at one point in space. Recently the ASL has proposed a method to control the polarized coherence properties of the illumination through a generalized van Cittert-Zernike theorem that describes the propagation of (a) (b) the mutual coherence matrix through space 3 . Using those methods, it is possible to gen- Figure 3 : Polarization fringes erate elds that are unpolar- used to control polarized 3 ized in the traiditional one- coherence properties point sense, but carry interesting two-point polarized coherence properties using carefully controlled polarization fringes (Fig. 3). References

L1

L3 P2 L2 P1 HWP BS1 SLM1 SLM2 BS2 QWP

Figure 4 : System to measure the coherence properties. We propose using two spatial light modulators (SLM), one to introduce the desired patterns and the second to probe the resulting coherence.

Simulate VCPol engagement scenarios and develop processing methods While VCT was demonstrated experimentally 2 , VCPol has not, and all developments to this point have been theoretical. In this task we will model engagement scenarios both for laboratory verication and for ultimate implementation at range. Laboratory demonstration of VCPol After the development of the source capabilities, engagement modeling, and development of exploitation software, a full lab-based VCPol system can be built. Design a system capable of performing VCPol outside the laboratory As the bridge to a future program, success in the above eorts will enable a full system design. Develop direct modeling equations for predicting the scattering of the mutual coherence matrix The mutual coherence matrix satises a wave-like equation and has a Greens function that describes its propagation. We hope to nd boundary conditions and scattering formulas that allow direct modeling of the statistical electromagnetic eld interactions, eliminating the need for Monte-Carlo simulations.

[1] J. S. Tyo and T. S. Turner, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 25, 2383 (2008). [2] E. Baleine and A. Dogariu, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 21, 1917 (2004). [3] O. G. Rodrguez-Herrera and J. S. Tyo, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A p. Accepted for Publication (2012).