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US 2020/0139904 A1Published application
Sensor Wiring with Parallel Bus Port Configuration
OwnerMichael Whiteinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A vehicular sensor system comprising an electronic control unit and a number of sensors associated with busses of the electronic control unit. The sensors may be wired in parallel with respect to their respective associated bus. The system may comprise a multi-pin power bus providing multiplex communication between the electronic control unit and the sensors. An associated method may be utilized to initialize and operate the sensor system.
Claims19
A vehicle sensor system comprising:
- an electronic control unit (ECU) configured to be coupled to a vehicle and having an ECU pin configured to transceive a multiplex signal;
- a multi-pin bus electrically coupled to the ECU pin;
- and
- a number of sensors electrically coupled in parallel to the multi-pin bus, each of the number of sensors configured to be coupled to the vehicle and comprising a sensor processor, a sensor memory, and a sensor pin configured to transceive the multiplex signal,
- wherein the ECU and each of the number of sensors is operable to transceive data by modulating the current, and wherein the multiplex signal comprises a power signal and a data signal.
2 more elements
A method of transmitting data signals comprising:
- establishing a multi-pin bus connection between an electronic control unit (ECU) and a number of sensors;
- transmitting an activation command from the ECU to each of the number of sensors using a multiplex signal protocol;
- transmitting a signifier from each of the number of sensors to the ECU using the multiplex signal protocol, each signifier providing an identifier of its respective sensor for the ECU;
- transmitting data from the ECU to each of the number of sensors using multiplex signal protocol;
- and
- transmitting data from each of the sensors to the ECU using the multiplex signal protocol,
- wherein the multiplex signal protocol defines modulating the current provided to the multi-pin bus according to a time-division multiplexing (TDM) scheme and the current modulation maintains a minimum current of electrical power supplied from the ECU to the sensors, the minimum current supplying power for the operation of each sensor.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.