FrançaisRadio synchronisation
Radio synchronisation ensures accurate display of the time without any variation. In addition, it ensures summer/winter time changeovers automatically to allow for a significant saving on costs for resetting independent battery operated clocks.
..:. Radio Transmitters: MSF (United Kingdom), FI (France), DCF (Germany)
The slave clock receives a time message, checks it, and compares it to its internal time.
If there is a difference, it automatically resets the time. The clock operates on the internal quartz time base in case of radio signal interruption.
The principal advantage of the radio synchronisation is to ensure the receiver has great accuracy and receives time changeovers automatically.
Today, most of the time distributions are equipped with an antenna for radio synchronisation.
..:. GPS synchronisation
All over the world, time synchronisation can be ensured via a network of 24 satellites part of the GPS system.
The GPS antenna receives a message every second (time + date), decodes it and sends it to the master clock.
The master clock receiving the UTC message (GMT) must be configurable to adapt to the UTC time to local time (time difference and introduction of summer/winter time changeover for the country if necessary). The time setting of receiver clocks is fully automatic.