Patent ID: 8054820

Claim:
An apparatus for synchronizing time information in a mobile communication terminal, comprising: a memory for storing region-by-region time offset information between a Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) and local times of time zones used in regions and information relative to radio time signal stations for wirelessly transmitting radio time signals to broadcast UTC information on a region-by-region basis; a baseband processor for receiving a radio time signal from an associated radio time signal station using information relative to the radio time signal station applied from a controller of the mobile communication terminal; a radio time signal decoder for decoding the radio time signal using the information relative to the radio time signal station applied from the controller when receiving the radio time signal from the baseband processor; and the controller for retrieving the information relative to the radio time signal station of a region where the mobile communication terminal is currently located, applying the retrieved information to the baseband processor and the radio time signal decoder, initializing an internal time of the mobile communication terminal to the UTC time using the decoded radio time signal, synchronizing the internal time of the mobile communication terminal to a local time of a time zone of the current region using time offset information relative to the current region among the region-by-region time offset information, and initializing a Real Time Clock (RTC) inside the mobile communication terminal to the UTC time, wherein the baseband processor receives the radio time signal from the radio time signal station, the information relative to the radio time signal station including information about a carrier frequency that was used to transmit the radio time signal from the associated radio time signal station to the current region of the mobile communication terminal, and decoding information for decoding the radio time signal transmitted from the radio time signal station.