When light is reflected, scattered, transmitted, or refracted by objects, polarization will occur with information decided by object characteristics. Polarization remote sensing is a useful complement to traditional remote sensing methods with great potential in application. Polarization physics mechanism is generally introduced with application in 1) polarization measuring instruments, 2) polarized reflection characteristics of land objects, 3) atmospheric polarization remote sensing, and 4) bionical polarization navigation.

According to the spectral polarization properties of atmospheric radiation and ground object radiation, the polarization remote sensing has been developed as new ground-based, airborne, and spaceborne observation techniques to be applied to many scientific regions, such as the global climate variation investigation, earth remote sensing, and astronomical research. The development of optical polarization remote sensing system is introduced. With the different detection objectives, these polarimeters have their special polarization analytical mechanism and polarization information acquisition model. The polarization mechanics of interacting between the incident radiation and the substance is analyzed too. The experimental results of polarization detection in the visible and infrared wavebands are discussed. The application fundamental research of spectral polarization remote sensing information is described. The spectral polarization information helps to retrieve the properties of atmosphere, natural ground object, man-made object, and celestial body, respectively. At last, the advances of polarization optics, optoelectronics and computer technology are concerned. The application processes of advanced polarization measurement and polarization calibration applied to the optical polarization remote sensing system are emphasized. The trend in development of optical polarization remote sensing technique is predicted.

The generation and development of polarized remote sensing, and its results of research on vegetation, soil and body of water are reviewed, and the future development of polarized remote sensing is forecasted. As is well known, the traditional remote sensing treats the earth as a Lambertian, which takes vertical observation to get the two-dimensional signal of surface, in order to get better remote sensing information processed by computers. The results show that, it is not quite reasonable to treat the earth as a Lambertian, the information from surface shows obvious three-dimensional features. Academician Li xiaowen did intensive studies on bi-directional reflection distribntion function(BRDF) and obtained significant results. Polarized reflectance is the twin sister of bi-directional reflectance. BRDF meanly shows the angle information of spectrum while polarized reflectance shows both the angle information and the polarization information of spectrum. When a part of earth surface is treated as a Lambertian, its angle information and polarization information are both zero. After analyzing and comparing the interrelationship and discrepancy between polarized remote sensing, multi-angle hyperspectral remote sensing and microwave remote sensing, it is not difficult to find that polarized remote sensing could successfully combine the three remote sensing measures above.

Three primary architectures are exploited for developing simultaneous imaging polarimetry (SIP). The status quo, developing prospect and characteristics of SIP are discussed. Finally the preliminary design of one kind of SIP architectures is given, especially the optical system design.

The polarization characteristics of light scattered by several materials such as paint, metal, dielectric layers are significant. The Stokes-Mueller formalism is used to study the depolarizing properties of sample. The Mueller matrix measurement is introduced. The polarized light from a He-Ne laser ( nm) is used, which is focused onto the surface of the sample, passed through the polarization-analysis optics onto a CCD camera. The retardation plates are submitted to a calibration procedure, 64 images are digitized and a generalized linear least square fit is calculated. The horizontal or vertical polarization, linear 45 or 135 polarization, and right or left circular polarization are compared and analyzed. The results show that for alumiunum plate, circular states have greater depolarization than linear states.

The measurement and analysis on the polarization of light scattering by aerosol particles are significant for research on atmospheric optics and physics. The measuring principle of the multi-angle polarization nephelometer is simply introduced, and the control of the polarizing angle on different scattering angle for the scanning mechanism in this instrument is discussed in detail.

The measurement absolute error for polarization imaging system was obtained by analyzing polarization measurement principle. In the polarization experiment, the real polarization of the polarized light and the polarization images were calculated, and the absolute error of polarization was obtained, which is consistent with the theory analysis. The accuracy of the polarization imaging system was detected.

Multi-angle polarimetric radiometer is the instrument that obtains multi-angle, spectrum, and polarization information of atmosphere by scan mode. According to the theory of measuring multi-angle polarization information of atmosphere, the multiplex data collection system in the multi-angle polarimetric radiometer was designed. And this system was tested by experiments. The results indicate that the multiplex data collection system in the multi-angle polarimetric radiometer can meet the requirements of designing.

The polarization state of the incident light can be changed differently according to the polarization state, viewing and azimuth angles of the incident light when it passes through the optical surfaces of the polarization camera. By analyzing the interaction between the incident light and the polarization camera, the radiometric model including the polarization capability is deduced. Calibration method of the radiometric model parameters and retrieval of the polarization information is introduced, and the general project of calibration for correcting the polarization phenomena of polarization camera is designed. The quantitative relation between output signal of polarization camera and Stokes parameters is given for high-accuracy polarization remote sensing, which can facilitate the quantitative application of polarization remote sensing information.

The principle of the multi-angle polarimeter was introduced as well as its opto-mechanical system. The optical system of multi-angle polarimeter was designed. For assurance of polarimetric precision and optical layout requirements, opto-mechanical design of multi-angle polarimeter were accomplished carefully, especially the parallelism of optic axis and the consistency of field of view.

In order to satisfy the requirements of the orthogonal elliptical mirror space structures, the design process must meet reliability requirements. Afrer the initial plan is confirmed, glue point locations are designed by using ANSYS design optimization module, and the weight loss of frame is obtained by using the topology optimization module. Finally, static and modal analysis and testing are carried out. The results show that the maximum stress value of the mirror is 1.5 MPa, the pad is 0.98 MPa, the first-order natural frequency is 181.8 Hz. All of them are within safety limits and meet the space requirements.