Simulating video through turbulence
Kevin M. McBryde, K. E. Gibson · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2013
Atmospheric turbulence can cause significant degradation to video over long horizontal paths. The refractive index fluctuations along the path from scene to camera lead to blur, varying across the frame and from frame to frame. Computationally inexpensive methods model this effect with an MTF blur function; however this technique neglects anisoplanatic effects. Wave optics techniques have been developed taking into account anisoplanatism, but ignoring scintillation, and spatial and temporal effects. Since long horizontal paths over varied surfaces (e.g. water to land or vice versa) will encounter varying turbulence strength along the path, the turbulence strength should be defined independently at each phase screen. Also important, turbulence strength can vary over short time scales (<1s), so a physically accurate simulation must allow time-dependent phase screens. We will present results of a wave optics simulation technique that includes these spatial and temporal variations. The results will provide validation for turbulence removal algorithms.