ENCODING SIGNALING INFORMATION AT A PHAYSICAL NETWORK LAYER BY USING CODE VIOLATIONS OF AN NB/MB LINE BLOCK CODE

摘要

A method of exchanging service information between devices (103a, 103b) in a data communication network (101) in which exchanged data are encoded into code words according to a prescribed nB/mB block coding scheme at a physical layer (107), the block coding scheme specifying invalid code words not defined for use for the exchange of data and control information, and non-invalid code words. Any service information always an invalid code word for providing a clock pulse (CK) to the invalid or a non-invalid code word, depending on the logical state (301) of the service information bit. The number of codewords with the clock and payload pulses CK and DT may be greater than one to relax operating speed requirements at th receiving side. This way, signaling service information can be encoded and multiplexed with the main data at a physical layer using the same physical channel Applications are in Fast or Gigabit Ethernet an Fiber Distributed Data interface networks.