Patent ID: 8416216

Claim:
A system for detecting one or more faults in a touch sensor interface, the touch sensor interface comprising one or more touch detection electrodes for sensing a touch event, the system comprising: a first oscillator, connected to at least one of the touch detection electrodes, for generating a first periodic signal based on the capacitance of the at least one touch detection electrode; a prescaler, connected to the first oscillator, for reducing the frequency of the first periodic signal by a predetermined value to generate a second periodic signal; a counter, connected to the prescaler, for receiving the second periodic signal and a third periodic signal, wherein the frequency of the third periodic signal is greater than the frequency of the second periodic signal, wherein the counter is updated for a count time window equal to the time period of the second periodic signal, and wherein the counter is updated for a plurality of counts based on the frequency of the third periodic signal; and a fault and touch detector, connected to the counter, for detecting the one or more faults by calculating a difference between the plurality of counts corresponding to the count time window and a previous plurality of counts corresponding to a previous count time window and comparing the calculated difference with one or more count thresholds.