Modelling atmospheric turbulence and its influence on face recognition performance

Atmospheric turbulence heavily affects image quality, and with it face recognition performance. As light travels through the complex air flows it is redirected, creating blurs and geometric distortions in the final image. A model proposed for atmospheric turbulence in free space optical communications applications is recreated for face recognition applications. It models atmospheric turbulence by recreating the complex airflows. They are recreated with bubbles with varying refractive indices. In two separate implementations, the edges of these bubbles are shown to cause artefacts, that distort the image differently from atmospheric turbulence. The effects of atmospheric turbulence on the performance of face recognition have also been tested, using a model based on Zernike coefficients. It showed that at mid to long ranges atmospheric turbulence can cause a significant decrease in facial recognition performance. Depending on the atmosphere, the face recognition can be either less accurate, or completely fail to detect any faces.