Patent ID: 8904755

Claim:
A heater control device of an oxygen concentration sensor, which is provided in an exhaust pipe of an internal combustion engine capable of executing idle stop control to automatically stop the internal combustion engine during temporary stop of a vehicle and includes a sensor element that detects oxygen concentration in exhaust gas and a heater that heats the sensor element, the heater control device controlling energization of the heater in the oxygen concentration sensor and comprising: a model temperature calculator that calculates model temperature of an installation position of the oxygen concentration sensor; a heat amount integrator that calculates an integrated heat amount by integrating the amount of heat passing through the installation position of the oxygen concentration sensor; an energization instructor that starts the energization of the heater when the integrated heat amount has reached a predetermined energization start threshold value; a resetter that resets the integrated heat amount and the energization start threshold value at the time of stop or the time of start-up of the internal combustion engine and, on the other hand, does not reset the integrated heat amount and the energization start threshold value at the time of automatic stop and the time of restart of the internal combustion engine by the idle stop control; and a corrector that corrects a parameter in consideration of the influence of heat radiation during the automatic stop of the internal combustion engine by the idle stop control.