A method for carrying data on a live host signal, comprising the steps of: varying timing in a host signal in response to data to be encoded, wherein variations in timing are smaller than a sampling period for detection and capture of the digital signal receiving the live host signal; sensing pulse timing variations in the received live host signal by comparison to a reference signal; and determining information in the sensed timing variations.

A communication unit includes a plurality of cascaded devices that include at least one master device and at least one slave device configured in a master-slave arrangement. The at least one master device and at least one slave device each include: a demodulator circuit configured to receive a distributed reference clock signal and re-create a system clock signal therefrom; a clock generation circuit that includes an internally-generated reference phase locked loop configured to receive the re-created system clock signal to create a master-slave clock signal; and an analog-to-digital converter, ADC, coupled to the reference phase locked loop and configured to use a same master-slave clock signal to align respective sampling instants between each ADC of the at least one master device and at least one slave device.