Systems and methods for clock synchronization using special physical layer clock sync symbols

Abstract

Systems and methods for clock synchronization are disclosed in which a primary node generates special physical layer clock sync symbols from the output of a reference clock and inserts the clock sync symbols within a symbol stream to one or more secondary nodes. Upon receiving a symbol stream, a secondary node can extract the clock sync symbols from the stream to synchronize its local clock with the reference clock of the primary node. In particular, the clock sync symbols can be inserted into the symbol stream at any arbitrary symbol location, e.g., even between consecutive symbols of a symbol encoded data frame. The clock sync symbols can also replace some control symbols in the symbol stream, such as idle or comma symbols. Accordingly, the clock sync symbols can be inserted into a symbol stream at fixed intervals, irregular intervals, or at any arbitrary time for high resolution clock synchronization.