System and method of adjusting the interstation delay in an information transmission system

Claim 1

A method of adjusting interstation delay in an information transmission system utilizing in one transmission direction the Time Division Multiple Access ("TDMA") method, the transmission system including a network comprising a central station and a plurality of sub-stations including relay sub-stations arranged in cascade, the sub-stations comprising time shifting means for shifting instants of transmitting information bits to the central station, the central station comprising time-detecting means for detecting an order in which said information bits arrive, each station in the network comprising at least a transmit time-base and a receive time-base, the method being characterized in that, the time-shifting and time-detecting means cooperate and in that the method is applied to the time-shifting and time-detecting means in order to adjust a delay to be allocated to the transmit time-bases in various sub-stations, the method comprising, a. at the central station, effecting the initial adjustment of the delay for each sub-station to a bit period and, b. at the sub-station, i. increasing the delay in steps of 1/(2n-1) bit period until a jump of 1 bit period is obtained, and then ii. decreasing the delay by n steps of the same size for optimum adjustment of the interstation delay, where n is an integer strictly greater than 1.

Claim 2

A method of adjusting interstation delay in an information transmission system utilizing in one transmission direction the Time Division Multiple Access ("TDMA") method, the transmission system including a network comprising a central station and a plurality of sub-stations including relay sub-stations arranged in cascade, the sub-stations comprising time shifting means for shifting instants of transmitting information bits to the central station, the central station comprising time-detecting means for detecting an order in which said information bits arrive, each station in the network comprising at least a transmit time-base and a receive time-base, the method being characterized in that, the time-shifting and time-detecting means cooperate and in that the method is applied to the time-shifting and time-detecting means in order to adjust a delay to be allocated to the transmit time-bases in various sub-stations, the method comprising, a. at the central station, effecting the initial adjustment of the delay for each sub-station to a bit period and, b. at the sub-station, i. increasing the delay in steps of 1/(2n-1) bit period until a jump of 1 bit period is obtained, and then ii. decreasing the delay by n steps of the same size for optimum adjustment of the interstation delay, where n is an integer strictly greater than 1.

Claim 5

A method of adjusting the interstation delay as claimed in claims 1 or 2, characterized in that it comprises the step of successively transmitting, on a data channel intended for the sub-station whose delay has to be adjusted, the following information signals: a telecontrol signal prohibiting all transmission from the sub-station in question; a telecontrol signal authorizing the sub-station in question to transmit only a reduced-size data packet in the time slot assigned thereto; and a telecontrol signal authorizing the sub-station in question to transmit in a normal manner.