SYNCHRONIZATION DEVICE AND SYNCHRONIZATION METHOD

• US 20100322208A1
• Filed: 12/26/2008
• Published: 12/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Furuno Electric Co, Ltd
• Original Assignee: Furuno Electric Co, Ltd
• Inventors: Tsudaka, Kentaro
• Granted Patent: US 8,300,610 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/336
• CPC Class Codes: G04G 7/02 by radio
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 3/00 Traffic control systems for marine craft marking of navigational route B63B22/16, B63B51/00

Abstract

There is provided a synchronization device capable of, even when transmission timings of a plurality of other ships are different, almost reliably synchronizing with the other ships during a transmission of a ship concerned and is also provided a synchronization method. The synchronization device 1, when the ship concerned performs a transmission, obtains timing differences DTi occurring over the past one minute from the transmission timing of the ship concerned (S102) and creates a histogram of the timing differences DTi (S103). The synchronization device 1 selects a class with the highest frequency from classes of the timing differences DTi (S104) and obtains a corrected timing DT′ associated with the selected class (S105). The synchronization device 1 corrects a reference timing of the transmission of the ship concerned using the corrected timing DT′ and performs the transmission of the ship concerned (S106).

Claims

1. A synchronization device, comprising:

an other-station transmission timing acquisition module for acquiring transmission timings of other stations; and

a station-concerned transmission timing determination module for determining a transmission timing of a station concerned based on the transmission timings of the other stations, the station-concerned transmission timing determination module including;

a reference timing generation module for generating a reference timing of a fixed time interval;

a timing difference calculation module for calculating a timing difference between the reference timing and each of the transmission timings of other stations; and

a timing difference storage module for storing the timing differences;

wherein a plurality of the timing differences are acquired over a preset time length of the past from a timing at which the station concerned is going to transmit, the number of substantially the same timing differences are counted, and the transmission timing of the station concerned is synchronized with a transmission timing corresponding to a timing difference with the greatest number of count.

2. The synchronization device of claim 1, wherein the station-concerned transmission timing determination module classifies the plurality of the timing differences into difference classes each having a predetermined difference time width, calculates a frequency of the timing differences falling under each of the difference classes to form a histogram, and synchronizes the transmission timing of the station concerned based on the frequency of the histogram.

3. A synchronization method of determining a transmission timing of a station concerned based on transmission timings of other stations, comprising:

generating a reference timing having a fixed time interval;

calculating timing differences between the reference timing and the transmission timings of the other stations;

acquiring a plurality of timing differences over a preset time length of the past from a timing at which the station concerned is going to transmit;

counting the number of substantially the same timing differences; and

synchronizing the transmission timing of the station concerned with a transmission timing corresponding to a timing difference with the greatest number of count.