A process is provided for ignition control in a cylinder of an internal combustion engine, using an ignition coil which has a connected primary winding and a secondary winding which is connected to a spark plug, and an ignition control unit which is used to control circuit logic connecting the primary winding by means of a line. According to the process, at the beginning of a working cycle, a switching signal is transmitted from the ignition control unit to the circuit logic, marking the beginning of the working cycle, and the temporal length of the signal is used as a reference length (idle time) for other digital information transmitted to the circuit logic by the ignition control unit.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a continuation of PCT International Application No. PCT/EP2006/001378, filed on Feb. 16, 2006, which claims priority under 35 U.S.C. .sctn.119 to German Application No. 10 2005 009 956.4, filed Mar. 4, 2005, the entire disclosures of which are expressly incorporated by reference herein.
A multi-spark ignition system for an internal combustion engine includes ignition coils each of which is mounted on one of spark plugs of an engine, an energy storing circuit, switching elements that repeatedly discharge electric energy stored by the energy storing circuit into the primary coil of the ignition coils; and a control circuit that controls the energy storing circuit and the switching elements according to consolidated signals each of which includes an energy storing command signal for storing electric energy into the energy storing circuit and a joint energy discharging period command signal for discharging the electric energy by the one of the spark plugs.
