Patent ID: 9602894
Date: 2017-03-21
CPC Classifications: G08C,H04L,H04Q

Claim:
1. A sensor system, comprising: a plurality of sensors configured to independently provide sensor data corresponding to a sensed quantity to a processing element; a plurality of processing elements, respectively configured to receive the sensor data output from the plurality of sensors and to generate sensor signals from the sensor data; a plurality of channel protection elements, respectively configured to receive one of the sensor signals output from the plurality of processing elements and to introduce channel protection data into the received sensor signal to generate a channel protected sensor (CPS) signal, wherein the CPS signal is a digital signal; a shared communication interface configured to receive CPS signals from the plurality of channel protection elements and to provide the CPS signals onto a transmission line coupled to an engine control unit according to one or more communication protocols, wherein the shared communication interface receives the CPS signals prior to the CPS signals being multiplexed by the shared communication interface onto the transmission line; a feedback path configured to provide the transmitted signal to a message decoding element configured to generate a recovered first CPS signal by decoding a protocol encoded first CPS signal comprised within the transmitted signal; a message integrity block configured to detect faults in the recovered first CPS signal by operating upon the channel protection data of the recovered first CPS signal; a safety check element configured to compare or correlate a second sensor signal from a second sensor to the recovered first sensor signal generated from the recovered first CPS signal; wherein the safety check element is configure to provide a status bit to a first channel protection element and to provide a second sensor signal to a second channel protection element if the safety check element indicates that a fault is present in the recovered first CPS signal; wherein the second channel protection element is configured to provide a second CPS signal to the protocol generation element if the safety check element indicates that the fault is present in the recovered first CPS signal; and wherein the second channel protection element is configured to not provide the second CPS signal to the protocol generation element if the safety check element indicates that a fault is not present in the recovered first CPS signal.