Carrier and bit synchronization in data communication - A tutorial review

This paper examines the problems of carrier phase estimation and symbol timing estimation for carrier-type synchronous digital data signals, with tutorial objectives foremost. Carrier phase recovery for suppressed-carrier versions of double sideband (DSB), vestigial sideband (VSB), and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal formats is considered first. Then the problem of symbol timing recovery for a baseband pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) signal is examined. Timing recovery circuits based on elementary statistical properties are discussed as well as timing recovery based on maximum-likelihood estimation theory. A relatively simple approach to evaluation of timing recovery circuit performance in terms of rms jitter of the timing parameters is presented.