Patent ID: 8156813

Claim:
An inspection device configured for inspecting a test object, comprising: a probe system configured to excite the test object to produce a wave response, to receive the wave response and to produce from the wave response a sequence of corresponding electric signals; a receiver having a plurality of signal processing channels, each channel configured to scale the electric signals to a different degree and to produce a sequence of one or more corresponding scaled signals; a channel selection device configured to select the scaled signals from the processing channels during successive acquisition cycles of the wave response; at least one analog to digital converter configured to digitize the selected scaled signals and to produce therefrom a sequence of digitized signal samples; a digital memory for storing the digitized signal samples; an averaging circuit and an associated controller configured to cause at least one of the scaled signals to be multiply produced responsive to a plurality of acquisition cycles, to sum the digitized signal samples corresponding to the multiply-produced scaled signal, and to obtain therefrom an averaged digitized signal sample; and wherein the average circuit and the controller thereof are configured to process the digitized signal samples and the averaged digitized signal sample to produce a composite signal output which is optimized for a dynamic range of the at least one analog to digital converter and achieves a system dynamic range that is greater than that of the at least one analog to digital converter.