Patent 7021300 was granted and assigned to Honda on April, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A deterioration failure diagnostic apparatus is provided for diagnosing an exhaust gas sensor disposed in an exhaust passage of an engine. The apparatus has a unit for generating a detecting signal and multiplying the generated signal to a first basic fuel injection amount to produce a second fuel injection amount. The apparatus includes a unit for calculating a feedback representative value based on feedback correction coefficients and multiplying the feedback representative value to the second fuel injection amount to produce a final fuel injection amount to be input to the engine. The apparatus includes a unit for extracting a frequency response corresponding to the detecting signal from an output of the exhaust gas sensor of the engine, the output being responsive to the calculated final fuel injection amount. A condition of the exhaust gas sensor is determined based on the extracted frequency response.