SEARCHING THE OPTIMAL SAMPLING INSTANT IN A TDMA PACKET TRANSMISSION SYSTEM

A system and method is disclosed for transmitting TDMA packets between interactive terminals and a head station using a transmission medium. The system includes an iterative method for determining an optimal sampling instant by computing the average amplitudes only for a predetermined number of the input samples, determining a maximum of the average amplitudes of these samples, deriving an approximation of the optimal sample using the maximum, repeating the average amplitude computation for input samples between the approximation and a neighboring sample whose previously computed average amplitude is the largest, and comparing of the result of each average amplitude computation with a previously computed maximum corresponding to the previous approximation for deriving a new approximation of the optimal sample.