Importance

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Abstract

A method, apparatus and system is described for distributing accurate time-of-day information from an existing telecommunications infrastructure without modifying the existing infrastructure. In particular, the system comprises a base station device which continually receives extremely accurate time-of-day information from, by way of example and not by limitation, a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) system, a local atomic dock, or a wired or wireless time standard. The base station periodically places time-of-day information into standard paging packets for transmission over a standard paging network. The paging packets are sent over telephone lines to the paging terminal for transmission whenever a time slot for transmission becomes available. The base station device records the actual time of transmission of the paging packet containing the time of day information and prepares the next time-of-day packet by placing the exact transmission time of the previous time-of-day packet sent. In the receiver, an algorithm is used to extrapolate the current time-of-day based on the history of transmitted packets containing measured time-of-day information of past transmissions.

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First Claim