Spatio-temporal hybrid color-polarization channeled sensors

Abstract

Recent advancements in channeled spatio-temporal polarization sensor systems have shown potential for improved imaging performance. Lithographic processes now allow for the manufacture of pixelated focal plane arrays with both color and polarization filters applied at the per pixel level. Both Sony and Pau's group at the University of Arizona have demonstrated the manufacture of these hybrid sensors. These new sensors produce spatially channeled hybrid color/polarization systems and crowd the available channel bandwidth space in the Nyquist square. We present a new system design which utilises polarization elements to generate additional temporal carriers, allowing for the separation of color and polarization channels. This separation has the potential to improve the hybrid system performance for certain classes of scene statistics and is analogous to a kind of super-resolution effect similar to a vibrating sensor or using motion for subsampling. The separation can be achieved by varying the polarization sensitive pixels in time, e.g. a rotating half waveplate or an electro-optic polarization element. We show the system design for an existing COTS Sony sensor as well as a design with improved performance over the Sony focal plane array, along with preliminary results on possible system performance.