A multi-gas sensor system was developed that uses a single broadband light source and multiple carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) pyroelectric detectors by use of the time division multiplexing (TDM) technique. A stepper motor-based rotating system and a single-reflection spherical optical mirror were designed and adopted to realize and enhance multi-gas detection. Detailed measurements under static detection mode (without rotation) and dynamic mode (with rotation) were performed to study the performance of the sensor system for the three gas species. Effects of the motor rotating period on sensor performances were also investigated and a rotation speed of 0.4π rad/s was required to obtain a stable sensing performance, corresponding to a detection period of ~10 s to realize one round of detection. Based on an Allan deviation analysis, the 1σ detection limits under static operation are 2.96, 4.54 and 2.84 parts per million in volume (ppmv) for CO, CO2 and CH4, respectively and the 1σ detection limits under dynamic operations are 8.83, 8.69 and 10.29 ppmv for the three gas species, respectively. The reported sensor has potential applications in various fields requiring CO, CO2 and CH4 detection such as in coal mines.

Design and fabrication of a dual spot-ring Herriott cell (DSR-HC) were proposed. The sealed Herriott cell with a dimensional size of 5.5 cm × 9.2 cm × 32.1 cm, possessed two input/output coupling holes leading to two absorption path lengths of ~20 m and ~6 m, respectively. An acetylene (CH) sensor system with a double-range was developed using the DSR-HC and wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) technique. A near-infrared distributed feedback (DFB) laser was employed for targeting a CH absorption line at 6521.2 cm. CH concentration measurements were carried out by modulating the laser at a 5 kHz frequency and demodulating the detector signal with LabVIEW software. An Allan-Werle deviation analysis indicated that the limit of detection (LoD) for the two absorption path lengths of 20 m and 6 m are 7.9 parts-per-million in volume (ppmv) and 4.0 ppmv, respectively. The DSR-HC concept can be used to fabricate similar cells for single-gas detection requiring two different detection ranges as well as for dual-gas detection requiring different absorption path lengths.

Polarization detection of space targets is one of the most important research directions in the field of space target recognition. In view of the fact that there are problems such as strong background noise and inconspicuous details of contour features in the polarization image of space targets, an image denoising and enhancement strategy is proposed. To solve the problem of high intensity of Gaussian noise in degree of polarization (DoP) images, a denoising method named adaptive noise template prediction (ANTP) is proposed to eliminate the noise. Compared to the existing methods, the ANTP algorithm performs better at reducing noise and improving image quality. Aiming at the difficulty of separating the background noise from angle of polarization (AoP) images, a denoising method named gray analysis of local area (GALA) is proposed. Compared to traditional methods, the GALA algorithm can effectively extract the contour features of targets and improve the contrast of AoP images. An image fusion method based on discrete cosine transform and local spatial frequency (LSF) is used to fuse the denoised DoP image and AoP image. The experimental results of the simulated and real space target polarization detection confirm the effectiveness of our proposed strategy.