US 8,914,222 B2Granted

Electronic control unit of internal combustion engine

AssigneeDenso Corporation

InventorsTakahito Kusumoto, Toru Itabashi, Kenji Mochizuki, Yuki Mikami, Yoshiharu Takeuchi

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Abstract

An electronic control unit (ECU), for use with an internal combustion engine, determines whether an abnormal combustion has occurred in the engine. The ECU uses a sensor signal amplifier to amplify a sensor signal from a sensor by changing an amplification power of the sensor signal and an A/D converter to convert the sensor signal amplified to a digital signal (i.e., a digitized sensor signal). The ECU uses an abnormal combustion detector to determine whether an abnormal combustion has occurred based on a characteristic of a waveform of the digitized sensor signal, and performs an abnormal combustion prevention control to prevent the abnormal combustion when an abnormal combustion is detected. An amplification controller is used to set the amplification power of the sensor signal amplifier based on the amplitude of the digitized sensor signal and a determination result of the abnormal combustion by the abnormal combustion detector.

Claims20

Dependent claims

An electronic control unit for use with an internal combustion engine, the electronic control unit comprising:

a sensor sensing one of a vibration and an in-cylinder pressure of the internal combustion engine;
a sensor signal amplifier amplifying a sensor signal from the sensor by changing an amplification power of the sensor signal;
an A/D converter converting the sensor signal amplified by the sensor signal amplifier to a digital signal;
an abnormal combustion detector determining whether an abnormal combustion has occurred based on a characteristic of a waveform of the digital signal from the A/D converter;
an abnormal combustion controller performing an abnormal combustion prevention control to prevent the abnormal combustion when the abnormal combustion detector determines that the abnormal combustion has occurred;
and
an amplification controller setting the amplification power of the sensor signal amplifier based on an amplitude of the digital signal from the A/D converter and a determination result of the abnormal combustion by the abnormal combustion detector.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.