Time information acquisition apparatus and radio wave timepiece

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 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, and the sample value is a value in a section between change points of a value of a code included in the standard time radio wave;
• 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, a number of samples of the predicted waveform data patterns is equals to a number of samples of the input waveform data pattern;
• 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 for each of the sections of each of the plurality of predicted waveform data patterns;
• an effective value calculator configured to calculate a number of effective errors, which is a number of errors concerning an effective section, in the number of errors for each of the sections;
• and
• 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.