bit stuffing


bit stuffing

[′bit ‚stəf·iŋ] (communications) The insertion of extra bits in a transmitted message in order to fill a frame to a fixed size or to break up a pattern of bits that could be mistaken for control codes.

bit stuffing

(protocol)A protocol which guarantees the receiver ofsynchronous data can recover the sender's clock. When thedata stream sent contains a large number of adjacent bitswhich cause no transition of the signal, the receiver cannotadjust its clock to maintain proper synchronised reception.To eliminate the possibility of such a pathological case, whena preset number of transitionless bits have been transmitted,a bit which does cause a transition is "stuffed" (transmitted)by the sender. The receiver follows the same protocol andremoves the stuffed bit after the specified number oftransitionless bits, but can use the stuffed bit to recoverthe sender's clock.

The advantage of bit stuffing is that only a bit (not abyte) is inserted in the data stream, and that only when thecontent of the data stream fails to provide a timing signal tothe receiver. Thus very nearly 100% of the bits transportedare useful data. In contrast, asynchronous transmission ofdata "throws away" a start bit and one or more stop bits foreach data byte sent.

bit stuffing

Inserting bits in data in order to break up a bit pattern that may cause the transmission to go out of synchronization. For example, in T1 lines, timing is maintained by detecting a change from 0 to 1. If too many zero bits are transmitted consecutively, the receiving end may lose synchronization because too much time has passed without sensing voltage. Therefore, in long strings of zeros, a set of bits that begins with a 1 and functions as a timing signal is "stuffed" into the stream of zeros at certain intervals.

When bits are added to fill out the remainder of a field or frame, it is known as "bit padding." See padding.