US Patent 10164760 Timing excursion recovery

Systems and methods are disclosed for detecting and compensating for timing excursions in a data channel. If a signal contains discontinuities in phase, a detector of the channel may lose lock on the signal, resulting in the channel incorrectly adjusting a sampling phase toward a following symbol or previous symbol. This is referred to as a cycle slip, where the integer alignment of the sampling of a signal contains a discontinuity over the duration of a sector, preventing decoding of the signal. A circuit may be configured to detect a cycle slip during processing of a signal at a data channel based on timing error values, and when the signal fails to decode, shift an expected sampling phase of a detector for a subsequent signal processing attempt. Shifting the expected sampling phase can cause the channel to adjust the sampling phase in the correct direction, thereby preventing a cycle slip.