First International Power and Energy Coference PECon 2006
November 28-29, 2006, Putrajaya, Malaysia
A Study on Battery Management System of
Ni-MU Battery Packs for Hybrid Electric
Vehicle Applications
Niu Liyong, Jiang Jiuchun, and Zhang Xin
Abstract This paper proposes a decentralized battery
management system (BMS) of nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH)
battery packs for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) applications,
which is necessary and important to guarantee the Ni-MH
battery pack's performance in the HEV application. The
presented BMS, which consists of a central management unit and
data acquisition modules, features the characteristics of reduced
wiring, great ability of expansion, easy installation, and high
precision and reliability. The estimation algorithm of the state of
charge (SOC) of the battery pack combines the open circuit
voltage method and the coulometer method in order to obtain
high precision.
Index Terms Battery Management System, Hybrid Electric
Vehicle, Ni-MH Battery, SOC
I. INTRODUCTION
In a world where more and more countries become aware
of the need for environment protection and energy
conservation, the development of electric vehicles (EVs) and
hybrid electric vehicles (HiEVs) has taken an accelerated pace.
EVs and HEVs are gradually available in the market, which
makes the dream of having commercially viable EVs and
HEVs into a reality [1].
EVs can be regarded as the only quasi "zero emission" road
transportation option since they use battery packs as the
unique propulsion energy source. They can provide
emission-free urban transportation. Even taking into account
the emissions from the power plants needed to charge the
battery packs, the use of EVs can still significantly reduce
global air pollution. Furthermore, from the energy aspect, EVs
can offer a secure, comprehensive, and balanced energy
option that is efficient and environmental friendly, such as the
utilization of various kinds of the renewable energies.
However, EVs can only be well accepted by the users for
community transportation, and the places with zero-emission
mandate, because of the cost and the limited driving range,
and, heating and air conditioning, associated with the low
energy density and high mass characteristics of batteries [1].
Consequently, the major automotive passenger vehicle
manufacturers in Europe, Japan, and the United States have
This work was supported by National High-tech R&D Program (863
Program) of China.
Niu L. Y and Jiang J. C are with School of Electrical Engineering, Beijing
Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China.
Zhang X is with School of Mechanical, Electronic and Control
Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China.
1-4244-0273-5/06/$20.00 C2006 IEEE
30
turned their attention to HEVs in 1990's. A 14EV can achieve a
longer driving range than an EV because of the combination
of an inner combustion engine (ICE) and a battery pack, either
in parallel type or in series type. And, because the engine is
constrained to run at its most efficient operation speed and
load conditions, the emission problem is greatly mitigated, too.
For short trips, the 1EV can even act as a pure EV without
ever turning on the engine. Also, HEVs can be built with
existing technologies. It's proved that HEVs are the only
current technology capable of reducing vehicle emissions and
fuel consumption by a large amount. Nevertheless, the cost
and life of the batteries is still the largest issue in the process
of commercializing and popularizing HEVs. This is
particularly true with HEVs that can provide all-electric
operation for a given range [2] [3].
During the last decade, tremendous progress has been made
in battery technology and several types of advanced batteries
appeared, among which nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH) is
especially practical.
Ni-MH batteries have been selected by Honda and Toyota
for their line of HEVs. One particular and very successful
application of the chemistry has been in the Toyota RAV4
EVs in the Southern California Edison (SCE) fleet. During
about seven years, 325 RAV4 EVs ran more than 7.5 million
miles and had prevented in excess of 900 tons of air pollution.
What is remarkable with the RAV4 EVs and their Ni-MH
battery is their reliability and durability. Among all those
RAV4 EVs, five that were intensively driven ran 100,000
miles each with little performance degradation. The positive
results prove that Ni-MH battery is currently a better choice
for EVs and HEVs applications [4].
Besides the performance requirement of the batteries, the
battery management strategy and technology is also a prime
important issue and facing great challenges. The battery
management system (BMS) should guarantee that the battery
voltage keeps in the proper range whenever it is during
discharging or charging, otherwise, the battery may be
permanently damaged due to overvoltage or undervoltage.
Also, the BMS should ensure the charging and discharging
currents of batteries are in proper range. Furthermore, the
BMS should have the functions of monitoring the temperature
of the batteries, estimating the state of charge (SOC) of the
batteries, and diagnosing and predicting failures of the
batteries. A BMS fulfilling above functions perfectly can
extend battery lifetime to a great extent.
The BMS presented in this paper is designed for the battery

pack used in EQ6100HEV, a type of 14EV developed by the
automaker in China. The structure of the BMS and the system
design considerations are described in section II. The SOC
estimation arithmetic used in the BMS is discussed in section
III.
II. BATTERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
A. General Introduction
The presented BMS adopts a decentralized system
configuration as that circled by the dashed line in Fig. 1.
Processor
t 2 Communication
I M easure lent Interface
CI DAM DAM DAM
1J -- - -I-I- - Fig.2. Block diagram of the data acquisition module
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the presented BMS
As shown in Fig. 1, the system consists of a central
management unit (CMU) and a number of data acquisition
modules (DAMs), the amount of which equals to the amount
of the battery cells in the battery pack, and a current shunt
resistor used as a current sensor (CS) to measure the charging
or discharging current. The data acquisition modules are
mounted on the battery cells directly and each collects the
voltage and temperature data of the battery cell where it's
mounted individually. The central management unit sends
commands to the data acquisition modules and gets the
information of the battery cells from the data acquisition
modules one by one though the digital communication bus.
Moreover, the central management unit carries out the current
measuring task continuously too.
This configuration's main advantages compared to the
centralized measure system include:
1) Reduced wirings. The data acquisition modules are
connected with the battery cells closely with very short
wirings. And there is only one communication bus between
the central management unit and the data acquisition modules.
Compared to the centralized measure system, where every
battery cell has to be connected with the measure unit, the
wirings are reduced greatly.
2) Enhanced insulation safety. In the centralized measure
system, the wires connected to the battery electrodes may be
tied together and closely. If some of the wires' insulation
sheaths break down, the short-circuit failure is probably taking
place. On the contrary, in the decentralized configuration, no
such wires need to be tied together and the risk of short-circuit
due to the wires' insulation sheaths breakage is almost
31
eliminated. So the insulation safety of the battery management
system is enhanced greatly.
B. Data Acquisition Module
The data acquisition module consists of a microcontroller
and its necessary peripheral circuits, a voltage regulator that
provides the power supply to all the circuits in the module, a
voltage measuring circuit (VM) used to measure the battery
cell's voltage, a temperature measuring circuit (TM) used to
measure the battery cell's temperature and a communication
interface used to communicate with the central management
unit. The module's block diagram is shown in Fig.2.
v | ~communication|
Other
_ 7M _ Interface |
faces %.'8Microcontroller|
|~~~~ot
m e Regulator
The power that the data acquisition module needed is
sourced from the battery cell where the module is installed
and regulated to the stable voltage by the voltage regulator. In
order to reduce the power consumption of the battery cell, the
data acquisition module is designed to work in a low power
consumption mode. The microcontroller that consumes the
power mostly works in the sleep mode at most of the time,
and only begins to measure the battery cell's voltage and
temperature after receiving the command from the central
management unit. After having got the results of the
measurements, the microcontroller sends them to the central
management unit through the communication interface and
goes back to the sleep mode again.
The voltage measuring circuit uses an A/D converter to
sample and measure the battery cell's voltage under the
control of the microcontroller. The temperature measuring
circuit uses a digital thermometer which is appressed tightly to
the battery cell to measure its temperature.
The communication interface is designed to be a 2OmA
current loop communication bus to enhance the EMC of the
battery management system. If one of the data acquisition
modules breaks down for some reason, its communication
interface appears to be in a high impedance state, which will
not interfere in other modules' normal operation.
C. Central Management Unit
The central management unit takes the battery cells' voltage
and temperature information and the charging and discharging
current as the input signals to fulfill the management functions.
Those management functions include the following tasks:
1) Estimating the SOC ofthe battery pack;
2) Diagnosing and predicting the failures of battery cells;
3) Recording the important operation data and failure
information of the battery pack;
4) Outputting alarm and control signals needed by other
 32

systems on the 1EV. of the battery management system or dump the recorded
The block diagram of the central management unit is failure data of the battery pack.
shown in Fig.3.
III. SOC ESTIMATION
Soc Failure Failure The SOC estimation methods mainly include open circuit
Estimation Diagnosis Prediction
voltage estimation, inherent resistance method, and
Peripheral Micro- Other coulometer method, etc. In all these methods, the coulometer
Circuits controller Interfaces method is the most practical and easy to implement one.
The SOC of the battery pack used in HEV usually keeps in
Power Communication Current the range of 50-80%, where the conditions of fully charged of
Supply Interfaces Measuring discharged seldom appear. So the accumulated error of the
- f t t
Voltage TemperatureCurrent Sensor
simple coulometer method can't be modified easily. Some
kind of method must be used to correct the error. The method
used in the presented BMS integrates the coulometer method
Fig.3. Block diagram of the central management unit
and the open circuit voltage method and also takes the
influence of charging efficiency and self-discharging rate into
The central management unit mainly consists of a account. So the BMS can carry out the SOC estimation more
microcontroller with its peripheral circuits, power supply efficiently and accurately.
circuit, current measuring circuit, communication interfaces The initial SOC is calculated by the open circuit voltage
and other interfaces. method, as the following formula illustrates:
The microcontroller is the core of the central management
unit and the whole battery management system. It issues SOC,, f (Uo, T) , (1)
commands to the data acquisition modules one by one to where,
control the measuring process of the battery cells' voltage and SOC1,j - initial SOC of the battery pack;
temperature and collects the measured results. It also Uo - open circuit voltage of the battery pack;
measures the current of the battery pack continuously when T - temperature of the battery pack.
the battery pack is being charged or discharged. After having The relationship between the SOC and the open circuit
collected all those data, the microcontroller analyzes those voltage of a Ni-MH battery cell is shown in Fig.4.
data and decides whether there is any battery cell that has
failures or not. If some battery cells do have failures, such as 1 42

overvoltage, undervoltage, or overheating, the microcontroller 14 4-71)l-:

/ A
will record the information and give out alarm signals. The 1 38
-207C
I- -I-
.4-
alarm signals may be used by the charger or the energy 1 .36
iolc
management system on the 14EV to adjust the battery pack's 1 34
charging or discharging mode and process. Furthermore, the 6 1 32
10c

microcontroller estimates the SOC of the battery pack based i 13

on those above data, which is discussed hereinafter. 1 28
The power supply circuit is an isolated DC-DC converter,
1.26
which produces stable DC 5V output from a DC electrical
1.24
energy source of about 24V. The necessary filters are also
1.22
included in the power supply circuit in order to enhance the
EMC of the central management unit. 1 .2 I
The current measuring circuit uses a multifunction energy .18
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
measuring IC. This IC includes an A/D converter which is SOC (%)
used to measure the current and an integrator to calculate the Fig.4. SOC vs. open circuit voltage of Ni-MH battery cell
integral of the current with the time varying. The integral
result is used to estimate the SOC of the battery pack. The These curves are obtained by multiple experiments under
precision of the integral calculated by the IC is higher than by different temperatures.
the microcontroller. This is important to ensure the precision When the battery pack is charging or discharging on the
of the SOC estimation. 14EV, the SOC of it is estimated by the following formula:
The communication interfaces include the current loop SOC SOCmi + Jiqu(T, SOC)dt -iddt -S(TJ nT)' (2)
interface, used to connect the central management unit and the
data acquisition modules, a CAN bus interface for the battery where,
management system communicating with other systems on the SOC - SOC of the battery pack;
HEV and a standard RS-232 interface providing the ic - battery pack charging current;
communication link between the BMS and other equipments, id - battery pack discharging current;
such as a handhold device to initially set the basic parameters Ta - usage time of the battery pack;
 r- T- :- T
33

q(T, SOC) - charging efficiency; IV. CONCLUSIONS

S(Ta, I) - self-discharging rate. It is considered that the Ni-MH battery is the first candidate
The integral calculation of the charging current ic and the for the HEV applications because of its high specific power
discharging current id is carried out by the central management density, long cycle life and moderate price. And the major
unit of the BMS as described in section II. C. At the same time, problems of Ni-MH batteries are well known: heat generation
the charging efficiency is selected according to the curve during charging, poor operational performance at low
shown in Fig.5. temperature, and requirements for overdischarge protection,
which are all amplified in a serial multi-cell batteries pack [7].
100 So, a battery management system is necessary very much in
such an application. The battery management system has to
monitor the state of the battery cells and control the charging
and discharging manner and process.
The presented BMS takes all the requirements for the using
----------- ----------- T-7
\
of Ni-MH batteries into account in the design. It also
X
t,
considered the practical factors such as low cost, easy
521 X
installation and high reliability. It has been put into use and
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achieved the expected targets.

20S V. REFERENCES
[1] C. C. Chan. "The State of the Art of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles,"
Proceedings ofthe IEEE, 90(2), pp. 247 - 275, 2002.2.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 [2] Floyd A. Wyczalek. "Hybrid Electric Vehicles Year 2000 Status," IEEE
Temperate (C) Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, 16(3), pp. 15 - 25, 2001.3.
Fig.5. Charging efficiency vs. temperature [3] Louis Browning, Stefan Unnasch. "Hybrid Electric Vehicle
Commercialization Issues," The Sixteenth Annual Battery Conference on
Applications andAdvances, pp. 45, 2001.1.
The self-discharging rate S(Ta, I) is a function of the [4] Michel C. Wehrey. "What's New with Hybrid Electric Vehicles," IEEE
temperature T and the usage time Ta of the battery pack as Power and Energy Magazine, 2(6), pp. 34 - 39, 2004. 11.
shown in Fig.6. [5] Victor Wouk. "Hybrids: Then and Now," IEEE Spectrum, 32(7), pp.16 -
21, 1995.7.
[6] A. Jossen, V. Spath, H. Doring, J. Garche. "Battery Management Systems
40 (BMS) for Increasing Battery Life Time," The Third International
Conference on Telecommunications Energy Special, 2000, pp. 85 - 88,
2000.5.
[7] Boris Tsenter. "Battery Management for Hybrid Electric Vehicle and
30
Telecommunication Applications," The Seventeenth Annual Battery
SO7C Conference onApplications andAdvances, pp.233 - 237, 2002.1.

20
VI. BIOGRAPHIES
Niu Liyong received his Bachelor in Electrical
Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University,
China in 2001 and now is a PhD candidate in
Electrical Engineering in Beijing Jiaotong
w ;: | University, China. His research interest includes
0 2 4 6 8 10 power electronics converters, computer measuring
Time (day and control technology.
Fig.6 Self-discharging rate vs. usage time

The curves in Fig.6 are obtained by multiple experiments

under different temperatures too. It's obviously that the
self-discharging rate rises as the temperature rises.
All these curves in the Fig.4-6 are discretely represented to
several numerical tables which are stored into the nonvolatile
memory in the central management unit of the BMS and can
be modified by using a handhold device communicating with
the central management unit of the BMS. Then, based on
these tables and the measured battery cells' voltage and
temperature information, the central management unit of the
BMS uses interpolation method to calculate every parameter
in (1) and (2). This combined method of SOC estimation gets
higher precision than the traditional methods.