a system and a method for simple and robust baud - rate timing recovery suitable for jointly operating with a decision - feedback equalizer are disclosed . timing functions for timing recovery are extracted only from filter coefficients of feed - forward and feedback filters . the relation between the coefficients of feed - forward filter and the impulse response is derived under a zero - forcing condition while the relation between the coefficients of the feedback filter and the impulse response is known . based on the relations , several timing functions with varied degrees of computation are derived , which can drive the sampling instances approximately at the peak point of the channel impulse response . since the derived timing functions use equalizer coefficients , they work jointly with equalization even without using a training sequence . simulation results over 5 - m and 100 - m utp category - 5 cables at 125m baud show fast and robust timing recovery operation in a phase - locked loop .