Analysis of a serial symbol timing recovery technique employing Exclusive-OR circuit

An analysis is presented of the performance of a serial symbol timing recovery (STR) circuit which employs an Exclusive-OR circuit for conventional coherent digital modulated communication systems. The output of the timing circuit is a nearly sinusoidal wave whose zero crossings indicate the appropriate sampling instants for extraction of the data. Assuming that the data pulses entering the timing path are even symmetric, exact analytical expressions for the mean and mean-squared values of the timing wave and for the RMS phase jitter are derived as a function of various system parameters such as channel band limiting, postfiltering, delay element, and power spectral density of noise. Numerical results, also checked by computer simulations, show that considerable improvement can be obtained in jitter performance, in addition to the advantages over other STR techniques of lower cost and simpler hardware implementation.