Synchronization system for a regenerative subtransponder satellite communication system

摘要

A satellite communications system has a number of earth stations sharing an uplink carrier in a time division multiple access mode. One of the earth stations is designated as the master station for the carrier. The uplink transmissions from each station are synchronized by computing the time interval between the arrival at the satellite of the signal from the master station and the signal arrival from each of the other stations. The actual time intervals are compared to the optimum intervals for a properly synchronized transmission from each station. If the comparison indicates that a given earth station is not properly synchronized, that station's time of transmission is adjusted until the actual interval substantially matches the optimum interval.