Mechanism for providing octet alignment in serial ATM data stream
First Claim
1. For use with a receiver of a digital communication system, said receiver having a cell delineation mechanism that is operative, given knowledge of boundaries of respective bytes of an incoming serial data stream, to delineate respective cells of said serial data stream, a mechanism for locating said boundaries of respective bytes of said incoming serial data stream comprising:
- a counter that is operative to count respective clock signals associated with said incoming serial data stream; and
a synchronization signal derivation unit, coupled to said counter and being operative to generate an output signal in potential alignment with the boundary of a byte of said incoming serial data stream, in response to contents of said counter reaching a prescribed count value, and iteratively shifting, the time at which said output signal is produced relative to the counting operation of said counter, until said output signal is aligned with said boundary of a byte of said incoming serial data stream.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A byte boundary information recovery mechanism locates the first bits of respective bytes of an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)-based serial data stream, used by a frame synchronization mechanism to delineate respective cells of the ATM stream, and thereby enables transceiver equipment to successfully receive and parse ATM traffic. The invention employs a counter offset-based scheme that generates an output signal in potential alignment with the (first bit) boundary of a byte of the data stream, in response to the contents of a counter reaching a prescribed count value. It then iteratively shifts, as necessary, the bit time at which the output signal is produced relative to the counting operation of the counter, until the output signal is aligned with the boundary of a byte of the data stream.
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Citations
16 Claims
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1. For use with a receiver of a digital communication system, said receiver having a cell delineation mechanism that is operative, given knowledge of boundaries of respective bytes of an incoming serial data stream, to delineate respective cells of said serial data stream, a mechanism for locating said boundaries of respective bytes of said incoming serial data stream comprising:
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a counter that is operative to count respective clock signals associated with said incoming serial data stream; and a synchronization signal derivation unit, coupled to said counter and being operative to generate an output signal in potential alignment with the boundary of a byte of said incoming serial data stream, in response to contents of said counter reaching a prescribed count value, and iteratively shifting, the time at which said output signal is produced relative to the counting operation of said counter, until said output signal is aligned with said boundary of a byte of said incoming serial data stream. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A method for locating boundaries of respective bytes of an incoming serial data stream coupled to a receiver of a digital communication system, said receiver having a cell delineation mechanism that is operative, given knowledge of said boundaries of said respective bytes of said incoming serial data stream, to delineate respective cells of said serial data stream, said method comprising the steps of:
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(a) counting respective clock signals associated with said incoming serial data stream; (b) in response to the number of clock signals counted in step (a) reaching a prescribed count value, generating an output signal in potential alignment with the boundary of a byte of said incoming serial data stream; and (c) iteratively adjusting the time at which said output signal is produced in step (b) relative to the counting operation carried out in step (a), until said output signal is aligned with said boundary of a byte of said incoming serial data stream. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A method of identifying initial bits within respective bytes of an incoming asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) data stream that is coupled to a receiver of a digital communication system, said receiver having a cell delineation mechanism that is operative, given knowledge of the locations of said initial bits, to delineate respective cells of said ATM data stream, said method comprising the steps of:
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(a) counting respective clock signals associated with respective bits of said incoming ATM data stream; (b) in response to the number of clock signals counted in step (a) reaching a prescribed count value, generating an output signal in potential alignment with a first bit of a byte of said incoming ATM data stream; and (c) iteratively shifting in a bit-wise manner, the bit time at which said output signal is produced in step (b) relative to the counting operation carried out in step (a), until said output signal is aligned with a first bit of a byte of said incoming ATM data stream. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16)
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Specification