Noise estimation apparatus and method thereof

A noise estimation apparatus, for calculating a noise estimation value of a frame;

• the frame having an M number of overlapping or non-overlapping blocks, each of the blocks having a plurality of pixel data including a target pixel data, where M is a positive integer greater than 1;
• the noise estimation apparatus comprising:
• a distribution calculation unit, for calculating pixel numbers respectively corresponding to a plurality of pixel values to generate a pixel distribution according to the plurality of pixel data of an ith block of the frame and a plurality of previous pixel data of the ith block of a previous frame, wherein i is a positive integer between 1 and M;
• a variance calculation unit, for combining the pixel data of the ith block of the frame and the previous pixel data of the ith block of the previous frame, and correspondingly generating a variance value;
• a distribution curve generation module, for generating a distribution curve according to the variance value by regarding the target pixel data of the ith block of the frame as a basis, and comparing the pixel distribution with the curve distribution to correspondingly generate a weighting value;
• and
• a noise estimation unit, for outputting the noise estimation value according to the weighting value and the variance value corresponding to each of the blocks of the frame.