Vectron International 166 Glover Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06856 Tel: 1-88-VECTRON-1 Fax: 1-888-FAX-VECTRON
The TRU2500 combines Vectron s SAW filter exper-
tise with custom GaAs ASIC technology for high per-
formance timing recovery applications. The circuit is
assembled on a precision ceramic hybrid and pack-
aged in a hermetic SMD package with industry com-
mon footprint and pinout. Precision SAW filter technol-
ogy assures full Bellcore compliance over all operating
conditions and eliminates the need for external tuning
or compensation.
High bit-rate SAW filter clock recovery was developed
for and has been proven in high reliability undersea links.
The timing recovery circuit must extract a clean clock
signal from an input NRZ data stream and then reclock
the data with the clock. A simplified block diagram of a
basic timing recovery circuit is shown in Fig 1.The data
retiming aspect of the design is somewhat straightfor-
ward. Recovering a clock compliant with jitter standards
and maintaining acceptable clock to data alignment at
the decision circuit are the most difficult aspect of the
design. It is this aspect of the design which VI has mas-
tered through many years of experience.
The clock recovery process can be viewed as a band-
pass filter operation, accomplished either through a
SAW filter or through the composite effect of a closed
loop system (PLL). Most clock recovery devices
employ a phase lock loop architecture, which employs
a phase detector and loop amplifier to lock a free run-
ning VCO to the input signal. At lower data rates PLL
designs provide acceptable performance, but as data
rate increase, the ability to control critical loop gain
parameters over environmental extremes becomes
exceedingly difficult.
The accuracy and stability of the bandpass character-
istic determines how effectively the process will com-
ply with stringent SONET/SDH jitter requirements.
The TRU2500 offers superior jitter transfer, jitter toler-
ance and jitter generation performance because its
bandpass characteristic is prescribed by a precision
quartz SAW filter which can be precisely controlled
and accurately reproduced in volume production.
The circuit architecture of the clock recovery path is
shown in Figure 2. Figure 3. illustrates the time
domain waveform and its associated frequency
domain spectrum at various points in the path. Since
the input NRZ data stream (A) has a null at the clock
frequency, non-linear processing of the signal is
required to generate spectral content at the clock rate.
The circuit uses a microstrip line to delay the data 1/2
of a bit period. The data and delayed data are then fed
through an exclusive or-gate to produce a pulse at
each data transition. This signal then has a strong
spectral peak at the desired clock rate (B) and can be
viewed in the time domain as a clock signal with miss-
ing pulses. The pulse train is then filtered and shaped
prior to the SAW filter to provide optimum perfor-
mance. The SAW filters this signal to provide a contin-
uous sine wave (C) with compliant jitter characteristics.
This signal is amplified and becomes both the output
clock and the retiming signal for the decision circuit.
Due to careful attention to pre-filtering and shaping,
SAW filter bandpass characteristics, and the elimina-
tion of feedback loop clock to data alignment control,
the TRU2500 is able to offer output jitter performance
as low as 2psRMS, a level not achieved by phase
locked loop designs.
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