Enhanced Military Target Discrimination using Active and Passive Polarimetric Imagery

Surveillance operations often make use of electro-optic (EO) imaging systems to detect civilian and military targets. To increase the overall target detection performance, such active/passive EO sensors could exploit the polarization of light as additional information to discriminate man made objects against different backgrounds. The target contrast enhancement obtained by analyzing the polarization of the reflected light from either a direct polarized laser source as encountered in active imagers, or from natural ambient illumination, can be used for such target discrimination scheme. This paper reports results from field experiments exploiting polarization-based imaging sensors to enhance the detection of man made objects. Active and passive polarimetric signatures of objects have been acquired at wavelengths in the near and long-wave infrared bands. Results demonstrate to what extent and under which illumination and environmental conditions the exploitation of active/passive polarimetric images is suitable to enable target discrimination.