Patent ID: 7848362

Claim:
A method for providing real time clock distribution in an advanced metering system mesh network, comprising: establishing a network including at least one root node and a plurality of node devices, at least some of which node devices comprise metrology devices; configuring the network for bi-directional communications between the at least one root node and each of the plurality of node devices; establishing a hyperframe having a predetermined length; dividing the hyperframe into a predetermined number of time slots represented by time slot numbers ranging from zero to the predetermined number of time slots; establishing a maximum hyperframe number corresponding to a number of times the hyperframe is to be repeated in a sequence represented by hyperframe numbers ranging from zero to such maximum hyperframe number; configuring the at least one root node for communications with a predetermined time standard; repeatedly incrementing the time slot number so that the time slot number rolls over to zero as the next number following the predetermined number of time slots; incrementing the hyperframe number once following each rollover of the time slot number so that the hyperframe number rolls over to zero as the next number following the maximum number of hyperframes; and broadcasting a message including a timestamp derived from the predetermined time standard from the root node to the plurality of node devices whenever the hyperframe number and the time slot number are both zero, whereby the plurality of node devices may each be synchronized with the root node.