Patent ID: 8456775

Claim:
A system for locating a reference pattern on a storage medium, the system comprising: a sliding window phase calculator circuit, wherein the sliding window phase calculator circuit is operable to receive a series of digital samples corresponding to a reference pattern including a periodic pattern and a mark pattern, wherein sliding window phase calculator circuit is operable to determine a phase select output based at least in part on samples of the periodic pattern included in a subset of the series of digital samples; and wherein the length of the sliding window corresponds to the number of digital samples included in the subset of the series of digital samples; a delay circuit, wherein the delay circuit is operable to delay the series of digital samples and to provide a series of delayed samples; and a mark detector circuit, wherein the mark detector circuit interpolates the series of delayed samples using the phase select output to yield a series of interpolated samples, and wherein the mark detector circuit is operable to query the series of interpolated samples for the mark pattern; and wherein the delay imposed by the delay circuit is selected from a group consisting of: approximately one half of the number of periods corresponding to the number of samples in the subset of the series of digital samples, and exactly one half of the number of periods corresponding to the number of samples in the subset of the series of digital samples.