LUMINOSITY DETECTOR FOR INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE, METHOD OF OPERATING ENGINE AND METHOD OF SENSING TEMPERATURE

摘要

A luminosity and temperature detector for an internal combustion engine (11) and method for measuring luminosity including a light probe (18) and photodiode (23) that receives the light transmitted from the light probe. The photodiode is designed, constructed and biased to operate within the zero temperature coefficient portion of its range for the wavelengths being measured. In addition, the dark current is measured when there is no luminosity due to combustion and this is subtracted from the other readings to obtain temperature compensation. Furthermore, the dark current measurement will indicate the temperature of the photodiode (23).