Carrier independent timing recovery system for a vestigial sideband modulated signal

In a system for receiving a high definition television (HDTV) signal transmitted as a modulated vestigial sideband (VSB) signal formatted as a one-dimensional data constellation of symbols representing digital image data and subject to exhibiting a carrier offset, a timing recovery network for establishing timing synchronism between a local receiver symbol clock and a transmitter symbol clock, said timing recovery network being capable of achieving said synchronism independent of said carrier offset when present in said received signal, said timing recovery network comprising:

• an input network (14,16) for receiving said VSB signal;
• a filter network responsive to an output signal from said input network, comprising a first band edge filter (20) and a second band edge filter (22) having band edge responses respectively associated with upper and lower band edges of a frequency spectrum of said VSB signal for producing double sideband amplitude modulated (AM) signals at respective outputs of said first and second filters;
• a phase detector network (28,38) for processing a double sideband AM output signal from said filter network to produce a control signal representative of a timing error;
• and
• a clock signal generator (40) responsive to said control signal for generating said symbol clock.