Phase-encoding : an event based scheme for on-chip signalling

This work describes the use of Phase-Encoding, a novel signalling scheme which encodes the items of data being sent into the order of events on a number of wires, all of which switch to indicate data transmission. The number of bits in each symbol depends on the factorial of the number of wires, increasing the number of bits per symbol; both rising and falling edges can be used as encoding events, doubling the bitrate for a given frequency in an efficient and economical manner. The signalling scheme can be used in asynchronous and synchronous environments, and is implemented using a source-synchronous approach; its main advantage consists in the "merging" of the clock and data Information into the data stream in an area- and, under some circumstances, power-efficient manner. Also, the probability of an induced fault on one or more wires affecting the signalling is limited to the "event window" where a symbol is actually sent; any induced fault outside this window is filtered out by the receiver.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo