Patent ID: 7136436

Claim:
A circuit for detecting boundaries in a stream of digital samples, the circuit comprising: a memory for storing at least a portion of the stream of digital samples wherein each digital sample comprises a plurality of values; a plurality of comparators coupled to the memory, a first input of each comparator coupled to a first memory location storing a first digital sample and a second input of each comparator coupled to different memory locations wherein the different memory locations correspond to digital samples received prior to the first digital sample and at least one value of the first digital sample stored in the first memory location is compared with a corresponding value of each one of the digital samples stored in the different memory locations, each comparator is configured to output a one value if the comparison is equal and a zero value if the comparison is not equal; and a summing circuit coupled to the plurality of comparators, the summing circuit containing circuitry to add the outputs from the plurality of comparators and produce a correlation value.