Modeling and measurement of optical polarimetric image phenomenology in a complex urban environment

Polarimetric scene phenomenology yields a remote sensing modality that can be used in tandem with or alternative to panchromatic, multispectral, hyperspectral, or infrared intensity imagery. A synthetic image generator boasting a validated polarimetric modality is extremely valuable when testing optical polarimeter models prior to construction and flight test of real sensor hardware and software. Virtual airborne optical sensors can be modeled and placed above a complex synthetic urban scene to create spectrally varying Stokes vector output imagery. Material reflectances, scene geometries, solar and sensor positions, and varying atmospheric conditions all combine to produce spectropolarimetric sensor-reaching radiance that can be characterized by a degree and angle of polarization image. For this paper, example synthetic images were rendered with the Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Image Generation (DIRSIG) model and compared with real-life camera imagery of motor vehicles. Polarimetric phenomenology was found to be consistent between modeled and measured imagery.