Estimation precision of degree of polarization in the presence of signal-dependent and additive Poisson noises

Arnaud Bénière (1, 2) , François Goudail (1) , Mehdi Alouini (2) , Daniel Dolfi (2)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Scop
2 Thales Research and Technology [Palaiseau]

We address precision of estimation of the degree of polarization (DOP) from the orthogonal state contrast image (OSCI) in the presence of both signal-dependent Poisson noise due to useful signal, and additive Poisson noise due to dark current and / or background light. We determine the Cramer Rao Lower Bound and deduce from it figures of merit for DOP estimation. In particular, we show that the additive Poisson noise has larger influence on DOP estimation than on intensity estimation when light is highly polarized

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Arnaud Bénière, François Goudail, Mehdi Alouini, Daniel Dolfi. Estimation precision of degree of polarization in the presence of signal-dependent and additive Poisson noises. Journal of the European Optical Society : Rapid publications, 2008, 3, pp.08002. ⟨10.2971/jeos.2008.08002⟩. ⟨hal-00746669⟩