Tire air pressure monitoring system

• US 20040046651A1
• Filed: 08/20/2003
• Published: 03/11/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Original Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Inventors: Norimatsu, Hideaki
• Granted Patent: US 6,922,142 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/445
• CPC Class Codes: B60C 23/0408 transmitting the signals by non-mechanical means from the wheel or tyre to a vehicle body mounted receiver
• CPC Class Codes: B60C 23/0445 Means for changing operating mode, e.g. sleep mode, factory mode or energy saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: B60C 23/0462 Structure of transmission protocol

Abstract

Provided is a tire air pressure monitoring system capable of sufficiently lowering the electric power dissipation in a monitoring unit. The monitoring unit acquires, on the basis of information on transmission intervals included in transmitted signals from sensor units, the next transmission timings of signals to be transmitted from the sensor units and is switched from a sleep mode to a waking-up mode to receive the transmitted signals from the sensor unit in synchronism with the next transmission timings. This can efficiently set the monitoring unit in a waking-up condition, i.e., a signal receivable condition, thereby preventing useless electric power dissipation and reducing the electric power consumption.

Claims

1. A tire air pressure monitoring system comprising:

a sensor unit mounted on a tire of a vehicle for measuring an air pressure of said tire and for transmitting a signal including an air pressure measurement value intermittently; and

a monitoring unit mounted on a body of said vehicle for receiving the transmitted signal from said sensor unit to monitor an air pressure state of said tire on the basis of said air pressure measurement value included in the transmitted signal, said monitoring unit includes;

timing acquiring means for acquiring a transmission timing at which a signal is transmitted from said sensor unit; and

mode switching means for, in synchronism with said signal transmission timing acquired by said timing acquiring means, setting said monitoring unit in a monitoring processing mode to receive the transmitted signal and monitor said tire air pressure state and for setting said monitoring unit in a sleep mode to rest its monitoring processing function for a period of time from when monitoring processing in said monitoring processing mode reaches completion until the next signal transmission timing.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein said sensor unit is made to transmit a signal including, in addition to said air pressure measurement value, information on the next signal transmission timing, and said timing acquiring means acquires a timing of transmission of a signal from said sensor unit on the basis of the information on the next signal transmission timing.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein said sensor unit is mounted on each of tires of said vehicle and each of said sensor units is made to determine the next signal transmission timing to make different signal transmission intervals at random.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the different signal transmission intervals of each of said sensor units are set to make a repeated transmission interval pattern comprising a plurality of transmission intervals which have different time lengths at random, and said timing acquiring means includes storage means for storing said plurality of transmission intervals constituting said transmission interval pattern for each of said sensor units.

5. The system according to claim 4, wherein said plurality of transmission intervals to be stored in said storage means correspond to reception intervals at which said monitoring unit receives the transmitted signals from said sensor units.

6. The system according to claim 1, wherein said sensor unit is mounted on each of tires of said vehicle, and intervals at which said sensor units transmit signals are set to differ from each other among said sensor units, and said timing acquiring means stores said intervals of the signal transmission from each of said sensor units to acquire a timing of the signal transmission from each of said sensor units on the basis of the stored transmission intervals.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein the signal transmission intervals of each of said sensor units are set to have different time lengths at random to make a repeated transmission interval pattern comprising a plurality of transmission intervals.

8. The system according to claim 1, wherein said mode switching means sets said monitoring unit in said sleep mode only when an ignition switch of said vehicle is in an off condition.