Patent ID: 8401025

Claim:
A machine-implemented windowing method for finding an extreme value, the method comprising: (a) determining and storing a previous extreme value for a previous window corresponding to a previous plurality of items; and (b) for each item in a current window corresponding to a current plurality of items: (b1) determining and storing a current extreme value so far in the current window corresponding to said each item and any previously processed items in the current window; (b2) determining and storing an overall extreme value based on the previous extreme value and the current extreme value so far; and (b3) performing further processing associated with the items based on the overall extreme value, without storing the current plurality of items corresponding to the current window for a subsequent window, wherein, at the end of the current window: the current window becomes the previous window; the previous extreme value is updated to be equal to the current extreme value so far; and the current extreme value so far is re-initialized for a new current window, wherein: the items are received packets in a packet-based communication system; the previous extreme value is a maximum delay-offset value for the previous window of received packets; the current extreme value so far is a maximum delay-offset value so far for the current window of received packets; the overall extreme value is a current delay-offset estimate value; the further processing generates, based on the current delay-offset estimate value, an output phase signal that can be used to generate a recovered clock signal; and the method is implemented by an adaptive clock recovery (ACR) system in a receiver of the packet-based communication system.