Linear Solution Method of Solar Position for Polarized Light Navigation

It’s a key issue in the research of polarized light navigation to obtain the solar position information efficiently and accurately by using the polarized skylight pattern. But existing calculation methods for solving solar position use time-consuming data-processing algorithms that solve nonlinear equations. In this paper, we propose a linear data-processing method to calculate solar position by utilizing the $\infty $ characteristic model of the polarized skylight pattern. The linear analytic model of the solar azimuth angle and zenith angle are established respectively by polar coordinate transformation of the $\infty $ characteristic model of polarized skylight pattern, which transforms the solution of solar position into the slope solution of the linear equations. The measured experiments under clear, cloudy and partial occlusion conditions verify the effectiveness and better robustness of our linear algorithm, which can provide a more simple and efficient method to achieve the solar position.