Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorI took another look at the datasheets. The image sensor datasheet gives very little detail. They refer to the SerDes chip DS92LV18 or DS92LV16. The latter I do not understand because there is 18 bits of data. Probably this is a typo. Both are rather large and rather expensive, so I prefer not to use them.
However, the datasheet does give the following information. There is both a refclk (word clock) and a bit clock. The refclk is single ended. The bit clock is LVDS. In the image sensor application example they do not use the bitclk. Clock recovery from the data is used instead. I am a bit puzzled as to why a bit clock could not be used. If I were to transmit the data 10101010101010, this would give the same electrical result as the bit clk. So the deserializer input must be able to handle such a fast signal anyhow.
