A pulse-swallowing counter is a component in an all-digital feedback system.
The divider produces one output pulse for every N counts (N is usually a power of 2) when not swallowing, and per N+1 pulses when the 'swallow' signal is active.
The overall pulse-swallowing system is used as part of a fractional-N frequency divider.
[1] The overall pulse-swallowing system cancels beatnotes created when switching between N, N+1, or N−1 in a fractional-N synthesizer.
[2] This engineering-related article is a stub.