Infrared imaging simulation through anisotropic atmosphere turbulence

Abstract

Atmosphere turbulence often degrades image quality in long range infrared imaging system due to intensity fluctuations, distortion, and blur effects. In this work, long range infrared imaging through anisotropic turbulence is simulated, which combines the theoretical turbulence effects models of optical waves (the angle of arrival fluctuations of optical wave and the modulation transfer function) under anisotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulence and the imaging processing algorithms (image convolution and interpolation methods). This simulation technique allows the performance assessment of a long range infrared imaging system under various anisotropic atmosphere turbulence conditions to be done in a cost efficient manner. Simulation uses single image containing no turbulence effects as an input and produces image sequences degraded by specified turbulence. Imaging distance, optics diameter, wavelength, anisotropic factor, general spectral power law, and turbulence strength are included. The influence of anisotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulence on the long range infrared imaging system is analyzed.