Patent ID: 8385402

Claim:
A non-transitory transmission element, comprising: at least one input and at least one output, the transmission element delivering a functional relationship between an input quantity applied to the input and an output quantity that can be picked up at the output, the functional relationship being stored in a characteristics map; wherein the characteristics map includes a plurality of segments each having a lower limit, an upper limit, a starting value, an end value, and a slope value, a first function value being assigned to the lower limit and a second function value being assigned to the upper limit, wherein the transmission element includes a delta-sigma converter having a quantizer and an integrator, a digitized input quantity appearing at an output of the integrator, and wherein the transmission element is adapted to use the digitized input quantity to select one of the segments from the characteristics map, and a particular starting value, end value, slope, the quantizer output becoming effective for computing a manipulated variable in such a way that the output quantity is interpolated between the lower limit and the upper limit of the selected segment.