Master station

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In telecommunications, a master station is a station that controls or coordinates the activities of other stations in the system.

Examples:

• In a data network, the control station may designate a master station to ensure data transfer to one or more slave stations. Such a master station controls one or more data links of the data communications network at any given instant. The assignment of master status to a given station is temporary and is controlled by the control station according to the procedures set forth in the operational protocol. Master status is normally conferred upon a station so that it may transmit a message, but a station need not have a message to send to be designated the master station.
• In navigation systems using precise time dissemination, the master station is a station that has the clock that is used to synchronize the clocks of subordinate stations.
• In basic mode link control, the master station is a data station that has accepted an invitation to ensure a data transfer to one or more slave stations. At a given instant, there can be only one master station on a data link.

Operation modes

In data transmission, a master station can be set to not wait for a reply from a slave station after transmitting each message or transmission block. In this case the station is said to be in "continuous operation".

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from Federal Standard 1037C. General Services Administration. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022.