Efficiency of data-aided timing recovery techniques

This paper assesses the tracking capabilities of data-aided timing recovery schemes in terms of an efficiency that characterizes, coarsely speaking, the amount of timing information that the scheme manages to extract from the incoming signal per unit of time and signal-to-noise ratio. Efficiencies of maximum-likelihood and various baud-rate timing recovery schemes are determined as a function of the data and channel parameters, and are optimized with respect to design freedoms of the schemes. These results are illustrated for partial-response channels and idealized digital recording channels