TDM/TDMA telecommunications systems.

摘要

A method for marshalling an additional outstation (3) of a time division multiple access (TDMA) telecommunication system including a basestation (4) and a plurality of outstations (1, 2), such as a passive optical network (PON). A sequence is transmitted from the additional outstation (3) to the basestation (4) at a level below the noise sensitivity of a receiver (49) of the basestation (4), detected at the base station and its phase determined by a correlation process. From the phase the loop delay to the additional outstation is determined and the outstation instructed to realign its transmission accordingly. The sequence is a short length sequence and the correlation can be performed by a binary division search method or a lowest common multiple method (Fig. 1).