  We propose a novel couple mappings method for low resolution face recognition
using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs). The proposed architecture
consists of two branches of DCNNs to map the high and low resolution face
images into a common space with nonlinear transformations. The branch
corresponding to transformation of high resolution images consists of 14 layers
and the other branch which maps the low resolution face images to the common
space includes a 5-layer super-resolution network connected to a 14-layer
network. The distance between the features of corresponding high and low
resolution images are backpropagated to train the networks. Our proposed method
is evaluated on FERET data set and compared with state-of-the-art competing
methods. Our extensive experimental results show that the proposed method
significantly improves the recognition performance especially for very low
resolution probe face images (11.4% improvement in recognition accuracy).
Furthermore, it can reconstruct a high resolution image from its corresponding
low resolution probe image which is comparable with state-of-the-art
super-resolution methods in terms of visual quality.
