Patent ID: 8463526

Claim:
A method for detecting a periodically pulsing operating parameter of an internal combustion engine ( 10 ), comprising the steps: detect a measured quantity of the periodically pulsing operating parameter of the internal combustion engine ( 10 ) in order to generate a periodically pulsing measurement signal, discretize the measurement signal in the time range having a fixed time increment, and so, in each case, a number of discrete measured values is obtained for one period of the measurement signal that corresponds to the number of time increments in the period, each measured value being considered as representative of the measurement signal in the particular time increment, and determine a mean value over the period of the measurement signal by calculating a mean of the discrete measured values, wherein, for at least one of the discrete measured values, an approximation of the course of the measurement signal over the assigned time increment ( 61 ) is carried out using a polynomial in order to obtain the discrete measured value.