Patent ID: 7043406

Claim:
A digital signal averager for averaging a plurality of scans, wherein each of said scans comprises digital signal data measured from an analog signal, said digital signal averager comprising: (a) a timing device for generating a start pulse and a first plurality of timing pulses for each of said scans; (b) a time delay device for generating a trigger pulse following said start pulse by a variable time delay, whereby said trigger pulse stimulates an analog signal source to generate said analog signal; (c) means for controlling the magnitude of said variable time delay for each of said scans; (d) an analog-to-digital converter for converting said analog signal to digital signal data in response to a second plurality of timing pulses; (e) said second plurality of timing pulses comprising a subset of said first plurality of timing pulses; and (f) means for averaging said plurality of scans whereby said variable time delay is corrected for each of said scans such that the same point in the phase of said analog signal is averaged using scans measured with different time delays in the averaging process to average out the internal noise that is coherent with the scanning process.