Slave clock

In telecommunication and horology, a slave clock is a clock that depends for its accuracy on another clock, a master clock. Many modern clocks are synchronized, either through the Internet or by radio time signals, to a worldwide time standard called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) based on a network of master atomic clocks in many countries. For scientific purposes, precision clocks can be synchronized to within a few nanoseconds by dedicated satellite channels. Slave clock synchronization is usually achieved by phase-locking the slave clock signal to a signal received from the master clock. To adjust for the transit time of the signal from the master clock to the slave clock, the phase of the slave clock may be adjusted with respect to the signal from the master clock so that both clocks are in phase. Thus, the time markers of both clocks, at the output of the clocks, occur simultaneously.