Sensor resolution enhancement for remote imaging by synthesizing mask-based camera array images

In this paper, we propose an architecture based on camera array with masks to enhance the sensor resolution of remote imaging system. The sensor resolution is enhanced by multiplexing the sensor images of each camera, in which the angular resolution bandwidth is converted using masks to expand the spatial resolution bandwidth. The improvement of the sensor resolution depends on the number of cameras in the array. The theory of improving the sensor resolution is discussed both in Fourier domain and spatial domain. We verify resolution enhancement of the architecture by ray-tracing imaging simulation. A simulation model is built to verify the resolution-enhancing ability of the camera array architecture. From each camera in the array, we get a resolution-limited image. The reconstructed image is synthesized from all the images of the cameras. The post-synthesized image has finer information details compared with the images of each camera. The resolution improvement varies with the object distance. The optimal resolution improvement of the reconstructed image is equal to the total sensor pixels of the camera array.