a gmsk timing recovery loop in a receiver of a gaussian minimum shift keying link with a low channel bit signal - to - noise ratio and a small bandwidth - bit period bt product in a high bandwidth efficiency channel , includes a hard limiter for converting at baseband a gmsk demodulated received signal into a hard clocking signal clocking a conventional digital tracking transition loop generating the bit timing signal in closed loop control for stable time tracking performance for coherent demodulation of gmsk signals . the hard limiter provides the hard clocking signal at baseband having transitions at multiple bit periods adjusted by the bit timing error signal from the digital tracking transition loop for providing reduced jitter of the bit timing signal for accurate timing recovery and detection of communicated data .