A decision-directed timing recovery scheme is proposed that maintains and updates a separate phase estimate path for each survivor data path in the maximum-likelihood sequence detection of intersymbol interference channels. For each survivor path, the phase estimate is updated recursively using symboldecisions implied in the path. Unlike in the existing per-survivor timing recovery approach, there exists a single global timing loop that operates on a single stream of phase sequence released

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... the phase-estimating maximum-likelihood detector that is associated with the merged survivor path or the best up-to-date survivor path. The timing error detector itself is derived as a recursive formulation of the least square solution that minimizes error between the observation sequence and the clean expected signal sequence. Jitter analysis, stability analysis and tracking time simulation validate the proposed approach. 1 Although the algorithm development and analysis are based on the firstorder model, the actual simulation results presented later do not make such approximation. Thus, the validation of the algorithm through simulation points to the reasonable accuracy of the first-order model for our purposes. © 1-4244-0357-X/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings. © 1-4244-0357-X/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings.