Patent ID: 8446800

Claim:
A time information acquisition apparatus comprising: an input waveform data pattern generator configured to sample a standard time radio wave signal including a time code indicative of time information from a second head position detected at the standard time radio wave signal in a predetermined sampling cycle in order to generate an input waveform data pattern having one or more unit time lengths, wherein a sample value at a sample point in the input waveform data pattern is one of a first value indicative of a low level and a second value indicative of a high level; a predicted waveform data pattern generator configured to generate predicted waveform data patterns each having the one or more unit time lengths, represents a string of codes based on a base time measured by an internal timer, and has a head position indicative of the base time or a time preceding or succeeding to the base time by a predetermined number of seconds, wherein a sample value at a sample point in the predicted waveform data pattern is one of the first value and the second value; an error detector configured to detect non-coincidence between the sample value of the input waveform data pattern and the sample value of each of the predicted waveform data patterns in order to acquire a number of errors indicative of a number of non-coincidences of each of the plurality of predicted waveform data patterns; a current time correction module configured to correct the base time based on the head position of the predicted waveform data pattern indicative of a minimum value of the number of errors; and a controller configured to determine the predetermined number of seconds based on a time difference between the base time corrected by the current time correction module and a current base time and a predetermined timer accuracy in order to determine the number of predicted waveform data patterns to be generated.