A method is disclosed for extracting data words from a binary serial bit stream having a fixed bit rate and consisting of fixed length words of n bits each, where n is an integer, each word is preceded by a start bit and followed by one or more stop bits. First a predetermined identifiable transition is detected in said bit stream preceding each data word. A clock signal (DCLK) consisting of n clock pulses is generated in response to each detection of the predetermined transition in coincidence with the bits of the data word following the predetermined transition. A data ready signal (DR) is generated after the passage of n bits to delineate the word boundary, and the data words are extracted from the bit stream using the thus generated clock pulses and the data ready signal.