Kapasitiivisen sensorin jatkuva itsetestaus

摘要

A capacitive sensor device includes capacitive elements for detecting at least two inertial channels. At least one of the inertial channels comprises at least two self-test tones with distinctive fundamental frequencies. Inertial signals in the at least two inertial channels are caused by change of capacitance in the capacitive elements due to movements of rotor masses. Self-test tones are fed into at least one capacitive element under control of a self-test control module and the at least two inertial channels are temporally multiplexed to allow feeding of the self-test tones during normal operation of the capacitive sensor device. Signals in the inertial channels are processed for extracting self-test signals corresponding to the self-test tones, and the self-test signals are analyzed for self-test purposes. Alarm is triggered if multiple consecutive samples of predefined set of self-test signals indicate error with same polarity.