Abstract

Along a clear line-of-sight optical signal path through the atmosphere, the usefulness of interference filters in rejecting unwanted background light is limited mainly by the technology of fabrication. If the signal to be observed is strongly scattered by fog or aerosols, the received signal appears to come from a wide angular subtense. In such a case it is found that the interference filter is not a very useful device for separating signal and background. The optimum photoelectron counting receiver equipped with such a filter performs not much better than a receiver without any filter. The difficulty is an interdependence between the effective bandwidth and field of view of such filters, which results in an optimum receiver performance in which neither parameter specifically appears. The results also apply to other wavelength-dependent filters, such as the liquid crystal, and filters using polarization anisotropy along a path between polarizers.

© 1971 Optical Society of America

Multilayer Dielectric Stacks of Coupled Filters

W. W. Rigrod
Appl. Opt. 10(7) 1524-1531 (1971)

Design and Use of Interference Passband Filters with Wide-Angle Lenses for Multispectral Photography

D. B. McKenney and P. N. Slater
Appl. Opt. 9(11) 2435-2440 (1970)

Suppression of Reflection Peaks in Passbands of Multilayer Dielectric Filters

W. W. Rigrod and G. Skelly
Appl. Opt. 10(2) 311-316 (1971)

Interpretation of the Sun’s Aureole Based on Atmospheric Aerosol Models

A. E. S. Green, A. Deepak, and B. J. Lipofsky
Appl. Opt. 10(6) 1263-1279 (1971)

Optical Filter Analysis as a Function of Nonoptimum Noise Conditions

J. E. Wasielewski
Appl. Opt. 10(11) 2439-2441 (1971)