Patent ID: 7454954

Claim:
A knocking presence evaluation circuit in an internal combustion engine having at least a pressure sensor facing a combustion chamber for each cylinder comprised in the engine itself and suitable to output a pressure signal, said evaluation circuit comprising: an input terminal for connection to the pressure sensor; an output terminal; a processing block connected to the input terminal and receiving said pressure signal from the pressure sensor via the input terminal, said processing block performing a processing of said pressure signal for isolating oscillations and generating a derived pressure signal; an acquisition block having an input connected to said processing block and receiving therefrom said derived pressure signal, said acquisition block generating first and second measure signals respectively corresponding to a number and a total duration of digital pulses obtained from said derived pressure signal; and a soft-computing block having an input connected to said acquisition block and receiving therefrom said first and second measure signals and connected to the output terminal, said soft-computing block supplying the output terminal with a knocking intensity index, calculated by soft-computing techniques, staffing from said first and second measure signals.