Patent ID: 8335234

Claim:
Synchronised control method of a plurality of formatting equipment (FE 1 , FE 2 ) of streams (TS), said items of equipment (FE 1 , FE 2 ) receiving the stream (TS) and transmitting to at least one modulator (MOD 1 , MOD 2 ) a formatted stream (TS_SFN 1 , TS_SFN 2 ) each comprising a succession of blocks of packets called “megaframes” (MF 1 , MF 2 , . . . , MFn) and megaframe initialisation packets (MIP) comprising a pointer to a subsequent megaframe, said packets (MIP) being used by the modulator (MOD 1 , MOD 2 ) to temporally identify a temporal position of a megaframe (MFn) relatively to pulses supplied by a time base (BT), said pulses being received by the items of equipment (FE 1 , FE 2 ) and the modulator (MOD 1 , MOD 2 ), the method comprising: defining a reference date (DREF) that corresponds, by convention, to the transmission date of a megaframe (MF 1 ) by the equipment (FE 1 , FE 2 ), said date (DREF) is expressed in a time system (TAB) and is common to the plurality of equipment (FE 1 , FE 2 ), and at each transmission of a megaframe (MFn): determining a current date (DCOUR) from a clock (HA) common to the plurality of equipment (FE 1 , FE 2 ), said date (DCOUR) is expressed in the time system (TAB), determining a temporal position (POS) of a megaframe (MFn+1) relatively to the time base (TB) from a temporal position of the megaframe (MFn+1) determined relatively to the reference date (DREF), determining a megaframe initialisation packet (MIP) content from the temporal position (POS), inserting the megaframe initialisation packet (MIP) in the formatted stream (TS_SFN 1 , TS_SFN 2 ).