Patent ID: 11876532
Assignee: MARVELL ASIA PTE LTD
Field: Basic communication processes (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 7:
8. A physical layer transceiver for a high-speed data channel, the physical layer transceiver comprising:
a receive path including:
receiver circuitry having an input coupled to the high-speed data channel;
a forward-error-correcting decoder;
circuitry for selectably coupling an output of the receiver circuitry to one of (a) the forward-error-correcting decoder, and (b) a bit-error-rate determining path, the bit-error-rate determining path having:
comparison circuitry configured to compare, bit-wise, a received predetermined data pattern to a locally generated copy of the predetermined data pattern, to derive output bits representing whether there was an error in a corresponding bit of the received predetermined data pattern, to determine error bits in the received predetermined data pattern, and
counter circuitry configured to:
group output bits from the comparing into symbols and codewords, and
for each codeword for which a count of symbols containing errors exceeds a number of symbols correctable by the forward-error-correcting decoder, count a total number of bit errors contained in the symbols containing errors.