The basic design principles of the four-stroke internal combustion engine has remained basically the same since patented in 1884. However, the engine control electronics have changed dramatically. The primary motivation is the need to meet legislative exhaust emission levels, provide competitive fuel economy, and meet customer quality expectations. For example, electronic fuel control is an enabler for meeting emissions and fuel economy goals. It also provides a variety of customer comfort features like cruise control, cold startability, fuel shutoff safety feature, and security lockout on startup.
Today's vehicles have features such as gasoline direct injection (GDI), knock detection, catalytic converters, oxygen sensors, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), evaporative emission control systems (canister purge and vent solenoid), misfire detection, and secondary air systems. Tomorrow's vehicles will feature electronic throttle control (ETC), variable valve timing, cylinder deactivation, camless engines, in-cylinder combustion control, electronic stability, collision avoidance, and remote starting. These features will spawn new methods such as autocoding, autocalibration, generic operating systems, floating point math, DSP algorithms, and model-based control.
By Duncan Bennett, Ramtron International The automotive market is well known for adopting new technologies, slowly and methodically. As a technology matures, it often finds use first in entertainment and navigation systems. Eventually, it may move into in-cab applications.
