Angle of Polarization Based Target Detection in Passive Millimeter-Wave Imaging

Target detection is a key issue in the application of passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imaging detection technology. Traditional methods are usually based on the original brightness temperature gray difference for threshold segmentation. In this paper, a new method for target detection using angle of polarization (AOP) is proposed. An updated AOP image is obtained by traversing the pixel values of an AOP image through a window that calculates the standard variation inside the window. Typical targets can be detected easily because they are distinguished from the background after the window operation. According to simulated multi-polarization PMMW images of a sea surface target, the proposed method is compared with a traditional method base on the degree of linear polarization (DOLP). The results show that our method has an advantage over DOLP.