Patent ID: 7092841

Claim:
A method for determining an absolute position of a movable wheel-side axle component in a vehicle body, wherein a first acceleration sensor is arranged on a wheel-side axle component for generating a wheel-side acceleration signal and a second acceleration sensor is arranged on the vehicle body for generating a body-side acceleration signal indicative of changes in a vehicle body leveling state, the wheel side axle component and vehicle body being relatively movable, said method comprising the steps of: twice integrating each of the wheel-side acceleration signal and the body-side acceleration signal to respectively form a wheel-side distance signal and a body-side distance signal; determining a first difference between the wheel-side distance signal and the body-side distance signal at a first time and storing the first distance as a first gap value; determining a second difference between the wheel-side distance signal and the body-side distance signal at a second time as a second gap value; and generating a switching signal when the wheel-side axle component reaches a reference position relative to the vehicle body and using the switching signal to indicate a reference position at time t 0 , the absolute position of the wheel-side axle component being determined by the reference position and a change from the reference position based on the first and second gap values.