Abstract

One problem presented by the processing of optical signals is that the noise encountered tends to be signal-dependent. Coherent sources, for example, generate photon noise characterized by variance that is proportional to the signal value. Sources emitting chaotic or superposed coherent and chaotic radiation exhibit photon noise variance that is quadratic in the signal value. For film-grain noise, the variance is proportional to some power of the signal. Other imaging devices such as optical disks exhibit noise having a similar signal-dependence.

© 1986 Optical Society of America