Patent ID: 6990615

Claim:
A data processing device for receiving a degraded data stream and generating therefrom an estimate of the original non-degraded data stream, said data processing device comprising: a data recovery circuit with at least one input for receiving a first data stream, said first data stream characterized by a first bit-rate and a plurality of signal levels, wherein said data recovery circuit is configured to generate an estimate of the signal level for each bit period of the first bit-rate and to generate, using each said estimated signal level, a quality factor representative of the accuracy of each estimated signal level; and a clock recovery circuit with at least one input for receiving said first data stream and at least one input for receiving said quality factor generated by said data recovery circuit, said clock recovery circuit configured to determine from said quality factor a first plurality of sampling times at which said first data stream should be sampled and to sample the estimated signal levels in accordance with such determined first plurality of sampling times, said clock recovery circuit further configured to generate a second data stream representing a recovered version of said received first data stream.