2013 6th International Conference on Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering

Design for Power Lithium Battery Management System of Electric Vehicle

Yang Wenrong, Li Lulu, and Zhan Junyi
Shanghai University Micro-electronics R&D center,
Post:200072; Shanghai, China
Communication email: lilulu@shu.edu.cn

Abstract—A kind of battery management system aimed at
power lithium battery within electric vehicle is introduced in
this paper. First, bottom detection module is discussed,
including the voltage measurement module, temperature
measurement module and current measurement module.
Based on the principle of less hardware overhead and higher
sampling and measurement accuracy, the corresponding
circuits are well designed. Then this paper gives the software
design flow diagram both about slave board and master board.
For different hardware environment in another project, so
expandability is considered in software design. Test results
show that the system functions smoothly with correct status
and measurement data and software is stable as well as robust.
Moreover, the external LCD could display the state of the
system dynamically in real time.
Keywords-battery management system; master board; slave
board
I. INTRODUCTION
Under the background of energy crisis and
environmental pollution, electric vehicles powered by
lithium-ion batteries came into being and are developed
rapidly. Frequently, the batteries will encouter problems
such as over-charge or over-discharge. Without being
solved in time, these problems will not only affect battery
life but also cause safe accidents. Therefore, battery
management system is essential. Both at home and abroad,
there are many researches ongoing, represented by
SmartGuard of United States and BADICHEQ of Germany,
while Japan and Korea also have their own battery
management system (BMS). Thanks to the energetic efforts
of national “Eleven-Five” and “863” plan, our own electric
vehicles enjoy a great development. Beijing Jiaotong
University is at the forefront, followed by BYD and Chery
Automobile Company. But the overall domestic technology
lagged behind international standards[1].
Typical battery management system mainly consists of
data acquisition module, central processing unit, balance
module, thermal management unit, communication module
and display module[2]. This paper describes the uppermost
data acquisition module. First, we will tell their hardware
structure, then software are introduced focusing on
programming process of the master and slave board.
slave board and master board, shown in Figure 1. The
system made up of 10 battery pack, which is consisted of 12
lithium iron phosphate cells in series with each other. And
we need distribute each pack a slave board responsible for
measurement and balance task. After a fixed interval, slave
will transmit relevant data to master. Master’s duty is
controlling all the 10 slaves, receiving data from them and
telling them how to balance. In some situation, the system
may function abnormally, master tells slave to handle it or
directly power off it. In addition, it sends balancing
message to slave and drives an external LCD display.
Master board and slave board communicate via CAN
bus[3].
A. Battery voltage measurement
The battery type used in the project is A123, working
range is 2.1-3.7V, so pack total voltage is 25.2-44.4V. The
under-measurement voltage is divided into cell voltage and
package voltage.
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Figure1.
Battery management system block diagrams

II. SYSTEM HARDWARE DESIGN

The battery management system consists of two parts:

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Figure 2 pack voltage measurement circuit
For the limited ADC channels is 8, if each single cell
occupies one, the IO port will be not sufficient, so we use
single channel multiplexing technology to do the
measurement, which is controlled by software[4]. The
package voltage is measured through a simple voltage
divider circuit to adapt the voltage sampling range of ADC.
It is shown in figure 2.
Two complementary transistors guarantee that the
circuit won’t work unless Vcc is on. In this method,
quiescent dissipation is eliminated.
Considering a pack consisting of many single serial
cell, from the ground to cell positive pole, the voltage
increases gradually. Though multiplexing technology has
been utilized to solve the insufficient channel problem,
connecting each positive pole to ADC without any
measures will result in the input voltage exceed the ADC
working range[5][6].
In this paper, we use transformer to overcome this
problem. We add a switch between battery and the
secondary winding of transformer. Turning on the switch,
the battery voltage will be reflected in primary winding, IN
port shown in Figure 3. After filtering, cell voltage is
transported to OUT port and then sent to ADC.
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Figure 3.The single cell voltage measurement circuit
In Figure 3, two diodes (D1 and D2) and a transistor
240
(Q1) compose a current source. Assume current through Q1
is I, then
U IN  (U D1  U D 2  U BE ) (1)
I
R1
Expression in bracket is equal to a constant U which
represents the voltage of the current source. The current
source is to filter the input voltage to our interesting part.
Temperature is critical to BMS. In extreme
temperature, battery won’t work normally. This will reduce
the cycle life or even cause security incident. Moreover, as
an important parameter, the state of charge has a direct
relationship with temperature [7]. So we need to measure
system temperature.
B. temperature measurement
In an electric car, there may be hundreds of cells.
However, detecting all the cells is not
Figure 4
Temperature measurement circuit
realistic and necessary. In this paper, we choose four typical
temperature sampling points which could reflect the whole
state of the system. Among the four points, one is located in
slave board. The left three are distributed on three of the 12
cells. In the temperature measurement circuit shown in
Figure 4, R1-R4 are thermistors [8]. Given the voltage in
these 4 points, we will easily figure out current temperature.
C. current measurement
For high current measurement resolution and broad
measurement range, we choose DHAB to do that, which is
very suitable for high-power and low-voltage electric
vehicles application. Within the DHAB is a Hall sensor, its
maximal measurement value is f500A. DHAB has the
advantage of better accuracy, linearity characteristics, low
temperature drift. Following equation is measuring
principle:
V k *I
Where k is a constant, provided by ODM.
 III. SYSTEM SOFTWARE DESIGN moves into circles.
The system software includes slave software and VWDUW
master software. The slave is responsible for state detection,
auto cell balancing [9], fault detect and handing, while the
master’s main duty is collecting data from slaves, driving
an external LCD, sending balance command and current LQLWLDOL]H
measurement.
A. Slave software design :DLWLQJIRU
After system powering on, slave board will be VODYH
initialized waiting until request signal from master arrived. LQLWLDOL]H
Then slaves check the system. Without error, the following
steps will be performed: check current voltage and
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temperature, balance cells and packs if needed, handle
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warning and error. If the system is abnormal, three cases
maybe existed: over voltage or under voltage; < <
over-temperature as shown in Figure 5; communication 6HQG 3LQJ
error. There are two kinds of error, temporary ones and UHTXHVW FRPPDQG UHT
permanent ones. We have solution in software to handle VLJQDO XHVWGDWD
these two errors. To the temporary ones, after the error got
resolved, it will go back to normal state. And to the other
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one, master will shut down the whole system immediately. 6ODYH
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Figure 6.The master program flow

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IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

:DLWIRU In this paper we simply take one pack for test. Power
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normal. LEDs on the slave indicate the system is in
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+DQGOH This paper introduces a hardware and software design
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Figure system runs well and achieves effective management of
battery cells and packs.
5.The slave program flow
This design takes both measurement resolution and
B. Master software design hardware overhead into consideration. CAN interface
between master and slave ensures reliability and quality of
Master is used to control all slave boards, collecting communication data. Software disposes different problem
the maximum and minimum value of voltage and discretely and it has the advantage of efficient code and
temperature, sending balancing command to the slaves, strong expansibility. Moreover, one can transplant it to a
measuring current and controlling LCD. system with different quantity cells without any change.
Figure 6 shows the master software flow. First, after BMS research is a hot topic currently. The unique
powering on, master waits for slaves to initialize. Then, it design of this paper provides an idea for such projects.
sends a signal to all the slaves to check the physical
connection. Receiving answers, program will enter the main REFERENCES
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