Multistation communication apparatus

Abstract

A multistation communication apparatus in which each of a plurality of primary stations (21) is connected to a plurality of secondary stations (91) by a communication channel for each primary station and the transmission from the primary stations (21) to the secondary stations (91) is performed by 1:1. The apparatus can arbitrarily vary a control period for each of the secondary stations connected to the primary stations and also enables the synchronization between the primary stations. The primary stations (21) have means for writing a transmission start flag (721) for starting transmission for each of transmission buffers (31s) corresponding to the secondary stations (91) and means for using a transmission start control signal (7611) of another transmission buffer. Furthermore, the primary stations (21) have means for matching the transmission start timing based on their own transmission start flags with the transmission start timing when synchronized with the another transmission buffer.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.