Patent ID: 8068572

Claim:
A self-timing method for phase adjustment of a sampling phase of an analog signal comprising a stream of symbols transmitted without a carrier, the method comprising: digitizing the analog signal at a first sampling phase within a symbol in order to generate a first quantized sample having a first digital value out of a first plurality of digital values; digitizing the analog signal at a second sampling phase different from said first sampling phase within said symbol in order to generate a second quantized sample having a second digital value out of a second plurality of digital values; repeating the digitizing at said first and second phases for different symbols in said analog signal; associating each of a first plurality of counters with a different one of said first plurality of digital values; associating each of a second plurality of counters with different one of said second plurality of digital values; during a predetermined period of time, incrementing a corresponding one of the first plurality of counters based on first digital values of the first quantized samples and incrementing a corresponding one of the second plurality of counters based on the second digital values of the second quantized samples; computing differences between count values of corresponding ones of the first plurality of counters and the second plurality of counters; adjusting said first and second sampling phases based on the differences computed between corresponding ones of the first counters and second counters.