By Werner Rler

System Engineer
Infneon Technologies AG
The automotive system en-
gineering group of Infneon
Technologies AG was assigned
the task of developing an E-Cart.
The drivable vehicle was to be
used to demonstrate the electri-
cal features of a hybrid car and
was to be powered by a big Li-ion
battery stack.
The need for battery manage-
ment with charge balancing was
understood immediately. The
simple conventional solution
dissipating power for charge
equalizationwould need to be
replaced by an active energy shift
between the cells.
A fruitless search through the
available literatureonly basic
principles have been published
forced the team to develop its
own know-how. The resulting
active system has much better
performance at material costs
comparable to the passive solu-
tion (Figure 1).
Battery architecture
NiCd cells and their successors,
nickel-metal hydride cells, have
been the dominating technolo-
gies for many years. Recently,
Li-ion batteries came into the
market. With signifcantly better
performance, Li-ion batterys mar-
ket share has been rising rapidly.
These cells have amazing energy-
storage capacity. Nevertheless,
this capacity is insufcient to sup-
port a hybrid motor using a single
cell. The voltage and the current
are both too low. To increase the
current capability, cells may be
connected in parallel. Higher volt-
ages can be achieved by connect-
ing cells in series.
Battery assemblers usually de-
scribe their arrangements using
shorthand terms such as 3 P 50 S,
which means three cells in parallel
and 50 cells in series. Modular ar-
chitecture is ideal for battery man-
agement with many cells in series.
A serial connection of up to 12
cells is combined into one block in
a 3 P 12 S array, for example. These
cells are managed and balanced
by an electronic circuit with an
MCU in its heart.
The output voltage of a block
depends on the number of cells
in series and the cell voltage. The
voltage of Li-ion cells is typically
between 3.3V and 3.6V. This leads
to block voltages between 30V
and 45V.
Hybrid drives need a DC sup-
ply voltage in the area of 450V. To
compensate for variations in cell
voltage depending on the charge
state, a DC/DC converter is a suit-
able link between the battery
stack and the motor drive. The
converter is also able to limit the
current.
For optimal operation of the
DC/DC converter, a stack voltage
of 150-300V is required. Thus, fve
to eight blocks have to be con-
nected in series.
Charge balancing
Li-ion cells are very susceptible
to damage outside the allowed
voltage range (Figure 2). If the
upper and lower voltage limits
(e.g. 2V and 3.6V for nanophos-
phate types) are exceeded, the
cells may be damaged irreversibly.
At a minimum, an extended self-
discharge rate is the consequence.
Over a wide state-of-charge (SOC)
range, the output voltage is stable.
The risk of leaving the safe area is
low. However, at the beginning
and the end of the safe range,
the curve rises and drops sharply,
respectively. As a precaution, the
voltage has to be monitored care-
fully.
If the voltage reaches a critical
value, the discharge or the charge
process has to be stopped imme-
diately. With a strong balancing
circuit, the voltage for the afected
cells can be driven back into a safe
area. To reach this target, energy
must be moved among the cells
whenever the voltage of any cell
in the stack begins to difer from
the others.
Conventional passive methodIn
common battery-management
systems, each cell is connected
to a load resistor via a switch. In
such a passive circuit, individually
selected cells can be discharged.
This method is only suitable in the
charge mode to suppress a volt-
age rise in the strongest cells. To
limit the dissipated power, small
currents in the area of 100mA are
used, resulting in balancing times
that may take several hours.
Active balancingVarious meth-
ods for active balancing can be
found in the literature. A storage
element to move energy is re-
quired. Using a capacitor requires a
huge array of switching elements
to link the storage capacitor to any
cell. It is more efcient to store
the energy in a magnetic feld.
The key component of the circuit
is a transformer. Infneons team
co-developed a prototype with
Figure 1: Infneons automotive system engineering group developed the
E-Cart prototype, which is powered by a big Li-ion battery stack.
Figure 2: Li-ion cells are very susceptible to damage outside the allowed
voltage range.
1 EE Times-Asia | July 16-31, 2008 | eetasia.com
Boost battery performance
with active charge-balancing
BATTERY CIRCUIT MANAGEMENT
VOGT Electronic Components.
The prototype is used for mov-
ing energy between the cells and
multiplexing the single cell volt-
ages to a ground-voltage-based
A/D conversion input.
The construction principle is
the fyback converter. This type of
transformer can store energy in a
magnetic feld. An air gap in the
ferrite core increases the magnetic
resistance to avoid the magnetic
saturation of the core material.
The transformer has two diferent
sides:
The primary side is connected to
the complete battery stack.
Every cell is connected to a sec-
ondary winding.
A feasible model of the trans-
former supports up to 12 cells. The
limiting factor is the number of
possible connections. The proto-
type transformer described has 28
pins. The switches are represented
as MOSFETs from the OptiMOS3
series that have an extremely low
on-resistance, so the conducting
losses are negligible.
Every block is controlled by
a modern 8bit MCU, Infneons
XC886CLM, which has a fash pro-
gram and a 32Kbyte data memory
(Figure 3). Two hardware-based
CAN interfaces support commu-
nication using the common au-
tomotive CAN bus protocol with
a low processor load. A hardware-
based multiplication and division
unit speeds up the calculation
process.
Methods
The bidirectional use of the trans-
former allows the application of
two diferent balancing methods,
depending on the situation. After
a voltage scan of all cells, the av-
erage value is calculated. Then,
the cell with the largest deviation
from the average is examined. If its
voltage is lower than the average,
the bottom-balancing method is
applied; if it is higher, the top-bal-
ancing variant is applied.
Bottom balancingThe example
in Figure 4 shows a situation
in which the bottom-balanc-
ing method is required. Cell 2 is
recognized as the weakest cell. It
has to be supported. When the
primary (prim) switch is closed,
the transformer is charged from
the stack. After the prim switch is
opened, the stored energy of the
transformer can be shifted into a
selected cell. This happens if the
corresponding secondary (sec)
switch (sec2 in Figure 4) is closed.
A cycle period consists of
two active pulses and a pause. In
this example, the period of 40s
equates to a frequency of 25kHz.
The transformer should be de-
signed for a frequency over 20kHz
to avoid a bothersome whistling
noise. This sound is generated
by the magnetostriction of the
transformers ferrite core.
Especially where the lower
end of the SOC of a cell has been
reached, the bottom-balancing
method helps to prolong the op-
erational time of the stack. As long
as the current drawn from the
stack is less than the average bal-
ancing current, vehicle operation
can be continued until the last cell
is empty.
Figure 3: Every block is controlled by a modern 8bit MCU. Infneons XC886CLM has a fash program and a 32Kbyte
data memory.
Figure 4: In this bottom-balancing example, Cell 2 is recognized as the weakest cell, and has to be supported. When
the primary (prim) switch is closed, the transformer is charged from the stack.
2 eetasia.com | July 16-31, 2008 | EE Times-Asia
Top balancingIf one cell has a
higher voltage than the others,
it is useful to draw energy from
the cell. In the charge mode, this
is absolutely necessary. Without
balancing, the charging process
has to be stopped immediately
when the frst cell is full. Balancing
will help avoid this by keeping the
cells at the same voltage.
The example in Figure 5 shows
the energy fow in the top-balanc-
ing mode. After the voltage scan,
cell 5 has been detected as the
strongest member of the stack.
When the switch sec5 is closed, a
current fows from the battery into
the transformer. Because of the in-
ductance, the current rises linearly
over time. As the inductance is a
fxed characteristic of the trans-
former, the on-time of the switch
defnes the maximum current
value. The energy portion out of
the cell is stored as a magnetic
feld. After sec5 is opened, the
prim switch has to be closed. The
transformer behavior changes into
a generator mode. The energy is
fed into the complete stack via the
large primary winding.
The current and timing condi-
tions are similar to the bottom-
balancing example. Only the
sequence and current directions
are reversed.
Balancing power
With the prototype confguration
used in the Infneon E-Cart, an
average balancing current of 5A
is reached. This is 50x higher than
the passive method. The power
dissipation in the complete block
caused by the balancing with 5A
is only about 2W. This requires
no special cooling efort and im-
proves the energy balance of the
system.
Voltage scanning
To manage the charge-state of
the individual cells, their individual
voltages must be measured. As
only cell 1 is inside the ADC range
of the MCU, voltages in the re-
maining cells of the block cannot
be measured directly. A possible
solution would be an array of dif-
ferential amplifers, which would
have to sustain the voltage of the
complete battery block.
The method described below
allows the measurement of all
voltages with only a small amount
of additional hardware. The trans-
former, whose main task is the
charge balancing, can be used as
a multiplexer.
In the voltage-scanning mode,
the fyback mode of the trans-
former is not used. When one of
the switches S
1
to S
N
is closed, the
voltage of the connected battery
cell is transformed to all windings
in the transformer.
Simply preprocessed by a
discrete flter, the measurement
signal is fed into an ADC input
of the MCU. The measurement
pulses generated when one of
the switches S
1
to S
N
is closed may
be very short. A practical on-time
is 4s. Thus, there is not much
energy stored in the transformer.
In any case, after the switch is
opened, the magnetically stored
energy is fed back to the complete
battery block via the primary tran-
sistor. Consequently, the energy
content of the battery block is not
afected. After one scanning cycle
over all cells, the system returns to
the original state.
The benefts of the new Li-ion
batteries can be taken advantage
of only with a capable battery-
management system. An active
charge-balancing system ofers
signifcantly better performance
than the conventional passive
approach. The ingenious use of a
relative simple transformer helps
keep the material costs low.
Figure 5: In this top-balancing mode example, cell 5 has been detected as the strongest member of the stack. When
the switch sec5 is closed, a current fows from the battery into the transformer.
3 EE Times-Asia | July 16-31, 2008 | eetasia.com