Introduction
The Audio Engineering Society and the European Broadcasting Union developed the AES3/EBU digital audio transmission standard.
AES3/EBU is a serial point-to-point interface that carries digital audio data over a standard cable. Audio data is typically in pulse code modulation (PCM) format. The reference design also supports compressed audio and non-audio data transmission. The information sent over the AES3/EBU is (non-return to zero) NRZ coded with the BPM
(bi-phase mark code) so clock and data can be recovered on the receive side of the interface.
The AES3/EBU reference design provides both a transmitter and a receiver. The receiver extracts the data and the clock from an incoming AES3/EBU stream and stores the parallel audio data and control bits into a FIFO buffer.
The received information can be extracted from the FIFO buffer for processing, or sent directly to the transmitter. The AES3/EBU nominal data rate is directly related to the source audio sample rate. The receiver's input data rate is set at compile time to a fixed frequency, supporting PCM sample rates up to 192 kHz.