Method and apparatus for performing digital timing recovery on oversampled 802.11b baseband signals

1. An apparatus comprising:

an antenna;

a front end receiving a signal spectrum from said antenna;

an A/D converter coupled to said frontend and digitizing said received signal spectrum;

a digital baseband processor in communication with said A/D converter and extracting and demodulating a plurality of individual channels from the digitized signal spectrum; and

an optimum sampling phase selection circuit receiving one of said individual channels and determining an optimum sampling phase from said one of said individual channels, the optimum phase selection circuit comprising:

a demultiplexor receiving an oversampled digital baseband signal at an input and providing a plurality of downsampled phases at respective outputs;

a correlation detector receiving said plurality of downsampled phases and providing a respective phase to a respective correlation peak detector, said correlation peak detector providing a peak sum signal for each downsampled phase;

a maximum detect circuit receiving said peak sum signal for each downsampled phase from said correlation detector and providing an optimum phase output signal; and

a multiplexor receiving said plurality of downsampled phases and receiving said optimum phase output signal from said maximum detect circuit, said multiplexor providing one of said downsampled phases as an optimum phase at an output such that symbol timing is determined based on the relative offset peaks in said optimum phase.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said frontend captures approximately 88 MHz of a spectrum at approximately 2.4 GHz.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said A/D converter comprises a 176 Msamples/second converter.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said digital base band processor comprises a digital mixer, a filter coupled to said mixer and a demodulator coupled to said filter for each of said plurality of channels.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said digital baseband processor provides a four times oversampled signal.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said plurality of individual channels comprises 3 channels.

7. An optimum sampling phase selection circuit comprises:

a demultiplexor receiving an oversampled digital baseband signal at an input and providing a plurality of downsampled phases at respective outputs;

a correlation detector receiving said plurality of downsampled phases and providing a respective phase to a respective correlation peak detector, said correlation peak detector providing a peak sum signal for each downsampled phase;

a maximum detect circuit receiving said peak sum signal for each downsampled phase from said correlation detector and providing an optimum phase output signal; and

a multiplexor receiving said plurality of downsampled phases and receiving said optimum phase output signal from said maximum detect circuit, said multiplexor providing one of said downsampled phases as an optimum phase at an output such that symbol timing is determined based on the relative offset peaks in said optimum phase.

8. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein said correlation detector comprises:

a first Barker correlator receiving an In-phase chip stream;

a second Barker correlator receiving a Quadrature chip stream;

a magnitude circuit coupled to said first Barker correlator and said second Barker correlator;

a Serial to Parallel (S/P) buffer coupled to said magnitude circuit,

a maximum detect circuit coupled to said S/P buffer;

a peak counter coupled to said maximum detect circuit; and

a peak accumulator coupled to said peak counter.

9. The optimum sampling phase selection circuit of claim 7 , wherein the correlation peak detector further provides a coarse timing lock signal to said maximum detect circuit.

10. A method comprising:

receiving a signal spectrum;

converting said signal spectrum to a digital signal;

extracting and demodulating a plurality of individual channels from said digital signal;

determining an optimum phase from one of said channels, the determining of said optimum phase comprising receiving one of said plurality of channels at an input of a demultiplexor;

demultiplexing said channel to provide a plurality of downsampled phases at respective outputs;

receiving said downsampled phases and providing a respective downsampled phase to a respective correlation peak detector;

providing a peak sum signal and a coarse timing lock signal for each downsampled phase;

receiving said peak sum signal and said coarse timing lock signal for each downsampled phase and providing an optimum phase output signal; and

receiving said downsampled phases and receiving said optimum phase output signal, and providing one of said downsampled phases as an optimum phase at an output;

and

determining symbol timing based on relative offset peaks in said optimum phase.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein said receiving a signal spectrum comprises capturing approximately 88 MHz of a spectrum at approximately 2.4 GHz.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein said converting comprises converting with a 176 Msamples/second converter.

13. The method of claim 10 wherein said extracting and demodulating comprises:

mixing, filtering and demodulating said digital signal to provide said plurality of individual channels.

14. The method of claim 10 wherein said extracting and demodulating comprises providing a four times oversampled signal.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein said plurality of individual channels comprises 3 channels.

16. A method of determining a best phase comprising:

receiving one of said plurality of channels at an input of a demultiplexor;

demultiplexing said channel to provide a plurality of downsampled phases at respective outputs;

receiving said downsampled phases and providing a respective downsampled phase to a respective correlation peak detector;

providing a peak sum signal for each downsampled phase;

receiving said peak sum signal for each downsamnpled phase and providing an optimum phase output signal; and

receiving said downsampled phases and receiving said optimum phase output signal, and providing one of said downsampled phases as an optimum phase at an output,

wherein the step of providing a peak sum signal further comprises the substep of providing a coarse timing lock signal for each downsampled phase, and the step of receiving said peak sum signal for each downsampled phase further comprises receiving said coarse timing lock signal for each downsampled phase.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein said providing a peak sum signal and a coarse timing lock signal comprises:

receiving an In-phase chip stream;

receiving a Quadrature chip stream;

determining a magnitude of said chip streams;

converting said chip streams to a parallel stream;

determining peaks of said parallel stream;

counting said peaks to provide a coarse timing lock signal; and

accumulating said peaks to provide a peak sum signal.