Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Relative merits of synchronization techniques

[John Gilmore]

> The former technique appears more general, less reliant on prior
> filtering, and immune to long strings of 1s or 0s.  On the other hand,
> the latter technique is simpler, requires fewer calculations and less
> memory.
> 
> So if the sample stream is known to have sufficient zero crossings and
> has been properly filtered, do you see any hazards to going with the
> latter technique?

Having both techniques available to GNU Radio users seems like a nice
thing.  And a zero-crossing block would also be useful for receiving
"async" as opposed to "sync" serial transmissions (that have no frame
sync code, just a start bit on each byte).

But since we already have a block that does this function reliably for
synchronous communications, adding a second way seems like premature
optimization, unless you have a specific application on a specific PC
that is failing to keep up with realtime.

Right now I would put my effort into something else -- like a block
that we don't have a good implementation of, or a higher level
function like an easy to use and flexible "scanner-like" GUI.

        John