Polarization characteristics of infrared radiation of space object

The polarization of infrared radiation is an important characterization of the feature and state information of the space object's surface. Due to the different in materials, surface features and on-orbit states, the polarization provides a theoretical support for the detection and recognition of the space targets. Through the detecting the polarization, the dimension of the target information would be increased, and then the ability of detection and recognition to the target would be increased too, so the shortcomings of the traditional infrared detection would be compensated. In this paper, the overall polarization characteristics from the reflection and self-radiation of the object are studied, and a mathematical model of the infrared polarization characteristics is established based on the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. And the influence of the surface roughness, the viewing angle and the zenith angle of incidence is analyzed on the degree of polarization. The research in this paper may provide basic theoretical support for infrared polarization detection and identification of space objects.