Method for operating an optical sensor

摘要

The method involves emitting transmission light radiation in the form of transmission pulses with a determined duty cycle by a transmitter (3). A receiving signal provided by a receiver (5) is sampled synchronously at a transmit clocking of the transmitter. An average value of the sampled receiving signal is constant during a failure-free operation of an optical sensor, and deviations from the constant average value are evaluated for determining the failure of the optical sensor, where a threshold evaluation is executed for determining the status of the failure.