Stokes parametric error analysis of rotating waveplate polarimeter in fully polarized state

Polarization detection technology provides more information than traditional photoelectric detection, including polarization degree, polarization angle, and ellipticity angle. This technology has higher accuracy in detecting targets and identifying features. The rotating wave plate polarimeter is the most commonly used instrument for measuring the polarization state of the target. Using a rotating wave plate-type polarimeter, the calculation of the Stokes parameters can be transformed into a problem of solving a definite integral using Fourier transform demodulation. The two main error sources affecting the rotating wave plate-type polarimeter in this system are the wave plate fast-axis azimuth error and the wave plate delay amount error. A polarization error model is established to investigate the impact of the non-ideality error of the polarization element on the acquisition of the Stokes coefficients of the measured target when solving the Stokes coefficients through the numerical integration method of Romberg under full polarization. The Poincaré sphere method is used to simulate the polarization state of the measured target when only the polarization angle and elliptic deviation angle are changed, and the simulation explores the rule of change between the Stokes vector measurement error of the system and the polarization state of the measured target when there is a non-ideal error of the polarization element. The simulation results show that in the presence of only the wave plate delay amount error, the error peaks of each Stokes vector do not correspond to the same sampling order, i.e., they correspond to different polarization states; In the presence of wave plate azimuth errors only, the error peaks of each Stokes vector correspond to the same sampling order, i.e., to the same polarization state. Under the same angular error, the influence of the wave plate azimuth error on the system error is larger than that of the wave plate phase delay amount error on the system error. The research method and results can provide certain research ideas and theoretical references for the error analysis research of the rotating-wave plate type polarization imager based on the rotating-wave plate type polarization imager.