Special characters

30 December 2020

8b/10b encoding employs two types of characters, data and special characters. When a character is converted from eight bits to ten bits, the serializer must be told if a byte is data or a special character by asserting a given pin on the serializer. Common special characters are used to indicate start of frame, end of frame, start of line, end of line, idle, or other control characters.  The special character K28.5 is used as the first character of all ARINC 818 ordered sets.