Analytic and numeric study of polarized light propagation in turbid media for lidar applications

In automotive applications, lidar systems are essential both for driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, yet adverse weather conditions like fog can lead to a considerably smaller obstacle detection range. Polarized illumination in combination with polarization-aware detection has been considered as a possibility to counteract. Therefore, we investigated time-dependent light propagation in an infinite homogeneous scattering medium, with an emphasis on polarization. Analytically, we derived solutions of the vectorial radiative transfer equation for the Green's functions of the single and double scattered radiance originating from a unidirectional point source. Moreover, we implemented an electric-field Monte Carlo simulation of a bistatic scanning lidar system and found very good agreement with the analytic results.