Patent ID: 7130368

Claim:
A method for synchronizing a clock of a receiver with a clock of a transmitter, wherein the transmitter is adapted to transmit a sequence of time references to the receiver, each time reference being representative of a time of the transmitter clock at the transmission of the time reference, the method comprising the steps of: for each time reference of a subset of the sequence: estimating a difference between the time reference and a time of the receiver clock corresponding to a reception of the time reference, wherein the difference is estimated based at least in part on a linear model of at least one previous difference between at least one previous time reference and a time of the receiver clock corresponding to a reception of each of the at least one previous time references; updating an intercept coefficient of the linear model based at least in part on a previous value of the intercept coefficient associated with a previously received time reference, a previous value of a slope coefficient of the linear model associated with the previously received time reference, and an error between an actual difference between the time reference and the time of the receiver clock at the reception of the time reference and the estimated difference; updating a slope coefficient of the linear model based at least in part on the previous value of the slope coefficient, and the error between an actual difference and the estimated difference; and modifying, for each time reference of the subset, a frequency of the receiver clock by a frequency offset based at least in part on the updated slope coefficient; wherein the difference is estimated based at least in part on an equation: {circumflex over (x)} T ( T− 1)= {circumflex over (b)} 1 ( T− 1)+ {circumflex over (b)} 2 ( T− 1)Δ t ( T ) where {circumflex over (x)} T (T−1) represents the estimated difference associated with a time reference received at time T and determined at a previous time reference received at time T−1, {circumflex over (b)} 1 (T−1) represents a value of the intercept coefficient associated with a previous time reference received at time T−1 previous to time T, {circumflex over (b)} 2 (T−1) represents a value of the slope coefficient associated with the previous time reference, and Δt(T) represents one of a group consisting of: an elapsed time between the reception of the time reference and the reception of the previous time reference and a constant value substantially equal to one.