Patent ID: 7426234

Claim:
A synchronization (sync) signal detector comprising: a sync signal generator for generating a reference sync signal, the reference sync signal having a signal characteristic that matches a known sync pattern in a received input signal; a sampler coupled to the sync signal generator that samples the reference sync signal to generate a digitized reference sync signal; a waveform correlator coupled to the sampler, the waveform correlator receiving a sampled portion of the received input signal and comparing the sampled portion of the received input signal to the digitized reference sync signal to generate a correlation waveform; a peak detector coupled to the waveform correlator and that detects a peak in the correlation waveform to estimate a timing offset, the peak in the correlation waveform indicating a potential alignment between the digitized reference sync signal and the known sync pattern in the sampled portion of the input signal; the digitized reference sync signal being offset by the timing offset to generate a time-shifted digitized reference sync signal; and a synchronization information calculator that receives the time-shifted digitized reference sync signal and the sampled portion of the received input signal and that compares the time-shifted digitized reference sync signal with the sampled portion of the received input signal to determine if the sampled portion of the received input signal includes a valid sync signal, the synchronization information calculator providing data to one or more components external to the synchronization signal detector, the data provided by the synchronization information calculator including information indicating whether or not the input signal includes the valid sync signal, wherein the data provided by the synchronization calculator includes a modulation index and determining if the sampled portion of the received input signal includes a valid sync signal further comprises calculating an amount of noise present in the sampled portion of the received input signal using the modulation index and comparing the amount of noise with a threshold to determine whether or not the sampled portion of the received input signal includes the valid sync signal.