| CPC H04W 56/0015 (2013.01) | 20 Claims |
|
1. An apparatus comprising:
a first node comprising a controller, a transmitter, a plurality of receivers, and an internal time base;
the controller being configured to estimate a time quality of the first node, said time quality indicating a degree of correspondence of the internal time base with an external network time reference (NTR);
the controller being further configured to maintain a source table containing identities and time qualities of a plurality of source table nodes with which the first node is able to directly communicate via a network;
wherein the controller is configured, during a requesting time period, to:
A) assign to the transmitter a subnet of the network that is associated with a highest time quality (Tqh) of the time qualities of the source table nodes, wherein the Tqh is higher than the time quality of the first node;
B) assign to a first receiver of the plurality of receivers the subnet of the network that was assigned to the transmitter;
C) assign to a second receiver of the plurality of receivers a subnet of the network that is associated with a next highest time quality Tqnh of the source table nodes, Tqnh being lower than Tqh, but higher than the time quality of the first node;
D) cause the transmitter to transmit a synchronization request; and
E) when one or more responses to the synchronization request are received from a corresponding one or more responding nodes by at least one of the plurality of receivers, improve the time quality of the first node according to the response received from the responding node having a highest time quality of the responding nodes.
|