Bipolar 8-Zero Substitution (B8ZS)

B8ZS (bipolar 8-zero substitution, also called binary 8-zero substitution, clear channel,
and clear 64) is an encoding method used on T1 circuits that inserts two successive ones
of the same voltage - referred to as a bipolar violation - into a signal whenever eight
consecutive zeros are transmitted. The device receiving the signal interprets the bipolar
violation as a timing mark, which keeps the transmitting and receiving devices
synchronized. Ordinarily, when successive ones are transmitted, one has a positive
voltage and the other has a negative voltage.
B8ZS is based on an older encoding method called alternate mark inversion (AMI). AMI
is used with Dataphone Digital Service, the oldest data service still in use that uses
64 Kbpschannels. AMI, however, requires the use of 8 Kbps of the 64 Kbps of each
channel to maintain synchronization. In a T1 circuit, there are 24 channels. This loss adds
up to 192 Kbps, which means that in reality only 56 Kbps is available for data
transmission. B8ZS uses bipolar violations to synchronize devices, a solution that does
not require the use of extra bits, which means a T1 circuit using B8ZS can use the full 64
Kbps for each channel for data. B8ZS is not compatible with older AMI equipment.
High Density Bipolar 3 (HDB3)
HDB3 is the European equivalent of B8ZS. It works in a similar way to HDB3 but uses 4
zeroes rather than 8. After the 4 zeros a violation will occur and the polarity is set to be
the same as the previous positive bit, e.g. 000V. The use of violations in the signal give it
extra 'edges' which makes synchronisation possible and data retrieval more accurate.
An additional technique is used to stop DC voltage being introduced by having too many
zeros. This works by adding a balancing pulse to any pattern of more than 4 bits the
same, i.e. B00V. The value of B will be changed to positive or negative as required to
make alternate violations of opposite polarity. The balancing pulse and the violation can
then be removed at the receiver to create the original data.
Bit stuffing is the insertion of one or more bits into a transmission unit as a way to
provide signaling information to a receiver. The receiver knows how to detect and
remove or disregard the stuffed bits.
Since this can interfere with the framing, a technique called character stuffing is used.
The sender's data link layer inserts an ASCII DLE character just before the
DLEcharacter in the data. The receiver's data link layer removes this DLE before this
data is given to the network layer.