Instantaneous Clock Recovery with Multi-Bit-Rate Fucntionality for High-Speed Communication and Switching Applications

The increased complexity of the modern electronics increases size. which reduces speed because of time delays in the interconnects. As a result. for frequencies above a few GHz, asynchronous communication between subsets of a complex system is unavoidable. The disadvantage of this approach is the need to recover the phase (clock) of the digital signal, which for semiconductor circuits requires a few thousand clock periods. Recovering the phase of multi-bit-rate signals is even more difficult. A clock recovery circuit with locking time of one bit has been developed at Conductus which makes it available for asynchronous communication even with multi-bit-rate signals. For Phase I of the project Conductus will develop and test the clock recovery circuit at frequencies up to 40 GHz. The chip will be fabricated using TRW niobium nitride (NbN) technology on a subcontract basis. and tested at Conductus. Conductus will also design the optimum architecture for the multi-bit-rate clock recovery system, which will have a frequency recognition unit with short detection time. For Phase II of the effort, Conductus will propose to develop a complete integrated clock recovery unit. operating at 10K. supporting multiple bit rates, and packaged in a closed-cycle refrigerator.