Rain sensor with sigma-delta modulation and/or footprinting comparison(s)
First Claim
1. A rain sensor comprising:
- a sensing circuit comprising at least one sensing capacitor that is sensitive to moisture on an external surface of a window;
an adder receiving, directly or indirectly, an analog output signal from the sensing circuit and determining a difference between the analog output signal from the sensing circuit and a feedback signal;
a quantizer including a comparator downstream of the adder that outputs a bitstream based at least on whether a received signal level is higher or lower than a predetermined threshold;
a lowpass digital filter downstream of the quantizer for lowpass filtering the bitstream so as to output a filtered digital signal; and
a correlation engine that performs correlation on the filtered digital signal in order to determine whether rain is present on the external surface of the window.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system and/or method for sensing the presence of moisture (e.g., rain) and/or other material(s) on a window such as a vehicle window (e.g., vehicle windshield, sunroof or backlite). In certain example embodiments of the invention, at least one sensing capacitor is supported by a window such as a vehicle windshield, the capacitor(s) having a field that is affected by moisture (e.g., rain) on a surface of the window. A sensing circuit outputs an analog signal that is based on and/or related to the capacitance(s) of the sensing capacitor(s). The analog output of the circuit may be converted to a digital signal via sigma-delta modulation, and subjected to processing (e.g., correlation) for determining whether moisture (e.g., rain, dew, fog, etc.) or the like is present on the surface of the window.
60 Citations
14 Claims
-
1. A rain sensor comprising:
-
a sensing circuit comprising at least one sensing capacitor that is sensitive to moisture on an external surface of a window; an adder receiving, directly or indirectly, an analog output signal from the sensing circuit and determining a difference between the analog output signal from the sensing circuit and a feedback signal; a quantizer including a comparator downstream of the adder that outputs a bitstream based at least on whether a received signal level is higher or lower than a predetermined threshold; a lowpass digital filter downstream of the quantizer for lowpass filtering the bitstream so as to output a filtered digital signal; and a correlation engine that performs correlation on the filtered digital signal in order to determine whether rain is present on the external surface of the window. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
-
Specification