Patent-family-84569772

A sensor device, such as a consumption meter, with an LTE modem, a processor system connected with the LTE modem, and a sensor system comprising at least one sensor configured to sense a physical parameter and to generate an output accordingly to the processor system. The sensor device is configured to receive an activation time via the LTE network, wherein the activation time includes an absolute time and/or an indication of a specific LTE frame number. The processor system is configured to synchronize timing to a current LTE frame number in cooperation with the LTE modem. This may especially be done by the processor system signaling on an electric pin to the LTE modem which in response outputs a current LTE frame number, and along with the signaling on the electric pin, the processor system starts a timer. Thus, with the timer started at a known LTE frame number, the sensor device can calculate precisely to initiate a predetermined action time synchronized with the absolute time indicated in the received activation time along with a specific LTE frame number. The action may involve performing a measurement with a sensor in the sensor device time synchronized with the received activation time. This provides high precision time synchronization of a group of sensor devices, thus allowing performing measurements simultaneously by the group of senor devices. This allows group measurements which are not possible with the time precision of internal clocks of a group of sensor devices, and this time synchronization can be important for some applications, such as acoustic leak detection in a utility network.