Autonomous synchronization of base stations in a digital wireless radiotelephone network

摘要

An apparatus and method synchronizes a communication frame of a newly added base station, in a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication network, to communication frames in the existing communication network of base stations by operating the newly added base station to receive down link signals of a neighboring active base station and synchronize its receive slot in the communication frame with a corresponding forward time slot of the communication frame of that base station. The receive time slot of the newly added base station is shifted by an offset reference time to establish it own forward time slot. The offset reference time is determined by the time interval required for the base station to change from a forward to a reverse channel.