Speckle noise in laser bar-code-scanner systems

We present a theoretical model and its experimental verification for speckle-induced noise in laser-based bar-code-scanner systems. We measured the dependence of the signal-to-speckle-noise ratio on distance, spot size, and detector size. Analyses of the power spectra of both the speckle noise and of the measured surface profiles of different substrates suggest that the paper surface granularity can be approximated by a white Gaussian noise process, thus confirming the assumption of the theoretical model.