Table 1.

Overview of various sensors.

Sensor Classification		System Composition	Typical Sensor	Reference	Advantages	Disadvantages
Point source polarized light sensor	Basic point source sensor	Photodiode, polarizer, filter		[3,4,5,18,31,32,33,34,35,36,37]	Simple structure, small volume, and cost.	It is easy to be disturbed by the external environment and has poor stability.
	Point source sensor for integrated navigation	Polarized light navigation, micro inertial navigation, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation		[38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56]	Improve navigation performance and accuracy, and overcome the disadvantages of single sensor.	High production cost and large volume.
Imaging polarized light sensor	Time-sharing imaging	Camera, turntable, polarizer		[57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70]	Simple production and low cost.	The orientation error and assembly error are large.
	Fractional amplitude imaging	Camera, polarization beam splitter, delayer		[71,72,73,74]	Multidirectional polarization angle image detection is available.	Due to the large volume and different imaging brightness of different detectors, the orthogonal error of polarizers is inevitable.
	Aperture splitting	Light field camera is usually used		[75,76,77]	It can image polarization images of multiple polarization states of the target scene in real time.	The requirements for lens and optical structure are high, and the relative sensitivity of noise leads to large polarization image error.
	Focal plane light splitting	Charge coupled device (CCD) camera, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) camera, pixelated polarization array		[78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96]	Good real-time performance, high precision, and high integration.	High fabrication cost and nanowire error lead to inconsistent optical response of polarizers in different directions.