Understanding Intrinsic Sensor Error

[mahannan]

How intrinsic error in a sensor is defined and how it can be estimated? I hv read somewhere that it is hardware dependent but some detail is required. Please help!

 

[mgb_phys]

I would say it is error resulting from the measurement method.
This is not necessarily due to hardware, imagine you sample a patch of ground looking for a mineral but you only measure a smaple every 10m, then the intrinsics error would be due to the sampling interval.
This is different from random error - noise on individual readings, or systamatic error - where all the readings are wrong in the same way due to the same effect.

 

[Claude Bile]

In terms of a sensor or a detector, I would venture that the intrinsic error is the intrinsic noise in the detector - For a light detector this might be thermal noise, shot noise, dark counts etc, and to be differentiated from noise in the signal you are trying to detect.

In other words, the intrinsic noise is the noise you add after detection has taken place. The total noise is then the noise in the signal you are trying to measure plus the intrinsic noise of the detector.

Claude.