Patent ID: 7426220

Claim:
A multiple access communication system comprising: master sector equipment adapted to control the overall operation of said system, and said master sector equipment comprising a master clock generator adapted to generate a master clock signal; a plurality of slave sector equipment adapted to transmit and receive communications directly to and from Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) in the system; for each of the slave sector equipments, a cable coupled between it and said master sector equipment for transmitting and receiving signals including said master clock signal, wherein the length of the cable for one of the slave sector equipments may differ from the length of the cable from another of the slave sector equipments; each of the slave sector equipments comprising a programmable, multiple tap slave sector phase-locked loop (PLL) receiving, at an input, said master clock signal, and wherein said slave sector PLL has a phase-select tap introducing a selectable value of phase delay, and wherein for multiple ones of the slave sector equipments, the respective slave sector PLLs output slave sector clock signals of different phase delay which match within a predefined tolerance, the phase delay of the slave sector clock signals of the respective slave sector equipments to the phase delay of the slave sector equipment having the longest cable coupled thereto; and nonvolatile memory adapted to store for each of the slave sector equipments, a phase select tap to satisfy the predefined delay matching tolerance.