Signal detect circuit for high speed data receivers

This invention relates generally to receivers including signal detect circuits. In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a signal detect circuit may analyze an input signal before passing it on to a receiver. The analysis may be done outside of the data path to avoid affecting the data path speed or adding distortion or jitter. The positive and negative thresholds of the data may be checked to see if the numbers of positive and negative crossings are comparable. Random and bursty noise can be detected since such noise normally does not have comparable positive and negative crossings.