Real Tiime CCD Averager for Ultrasonic Applications

Abstract

<p>An ultrasonic acquisition and processing system is being developed which incorporates a real time CCD averager. The averager sums the received ultrasonic signal with the weighted past average to produce the latest average. The averager performance is a function of scan resolution, signal repetition rate, scan velocity, CCD clock rate, weighting value and number of averages desired. The present averager should provide a theoretical improvement in signal to noise of 6 dB. Aside from improving the signal strength at the present scan position the averager is designed such that the signal level from the previous scan location has decayed by at least 10 dB. The paper will discuss averager results, and the various design considerations and simulation testing required to achieve and verify averager performance.</p>