Patent ID: 7860335

Claim:
An apparatus for signal-to-noise enhancement, the apparatus comprising: a rank order filter configured to order each signal data value in a set of signal data values based on a signal amplitude of the each signal data value to form an ordered set of signal data values, wherein the rank order filter receives an input data stream and orders the input data in a data stack as a set of “N” signal samples having a number of groups; a comparator configured to calculate a closeness threshold based on the ordered set of signal data values, wherein the comparator receives the ordered set of data values from the rank order filter, wherein the comparator selects at least one signal data value from the ordered set of signal data values ordered by the rank order filter to form a subset of selected data values using a reference signal data value, wherein the reference signal data value is a maximum data value in the set of ordered data values, wherein low data value signals in the set of ordered data values are unwanted noise, and wherein the closeness threshold is calculated by multiplying a user input integer “k” by the variance “sigma 0 ”; and a signal averager configured to generate a signal average and calculate a signal variance, wherein the signal averager averages the subset of selected data values selected from the ordered set of data values by the comparator to form the signal average using a spike adaptive time delay algorithm.