US Patent 10920705 Method and system for variable displacement engine

Methods and systems are provided for reduction of VDE harmonics and improvement in the phase alignment of powertrain sensor signals that are asynchronously tasked. In one example, torque converter slip control is improved in a variable displacement engine by processing a raw torque converter turbine speed signal with a moving average filtered engine speed signal. By determining an actual delay between the sampled signals and adjusting a downstream filter parameter, a desired delay can be provided between the samples to align the phases and reduce the signal harmonics.