Alarm system for monitoring pressurized vehicular tires

Abstract

Abstract Alarm system for monitoring pressurized vehicular tires for their gas mass, basically comprising a wheel unit for at least some of the tires of the vehicle, and a common receiver. Each wheel unit has an antenna made of a flexible material in the form of an open annulus, suitable to be snapped into and held by its resilience against the inner periphery of the respective tire, a continuous wire loop being embedded in the annulus for transmitting signals but optionally also for receiving power. At symmetrical location about the inside of the antenna, an electro-magnentic power generator module, a gas-mass monitoring sensor module, and a signal transmitter are mounted, electrically interconnected, for giving a preferably two-bit signal indication to the common receiver. The latter may have signal decoding and alarm circuitry to display at least two different conditions, namely a warning and an alarm condition. The transmitter modules in the wheel units and the common receiver may have circuitry for intermittently but continuously transmitting the two-bit signal so long as the gas mass monitored by the respective sensor module is within predetermined limits, the absence of one of the two signals being indicative within the receiver of the warning condition, while the absence of both signals results in the alarm condition. The invention is also intended to relate to the wheel unit, to the antenna, separately, to the electro-magnetic power generator therein, and to the gas mass sensor mentioned above.

Inventors

• 👤 Dennis G. Pappas
• 👤 Matthew C. Baum
• 👤 Samuel N. Small
• 👤 Robert T. Adams
• 👤 Robert P. Freedman

Bibliographic Details