Noise characteristics of 3D time-of-flight cameras

Time-of-flight (TOF) cameras are based on a new technology that delivers distance maps by the use of a modulated light source. In this paper we first describe a set of experiments that we performed with TOF cameras. We then propose a noise model which is able to explain some of the phenomena observed in the experiments. The model is based on assuming a noise source that is correlated with the light source (shot noise) and an additional additive noise source (dark current noise). The model predicts well the dependency of the distance errors on the image intensity and the true distance at an individual pixel.