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Battery Emulation for Battery Modular Multilevel Management (BM3)

Converters and Reconfigurable Batteries with Series, Parallel and Bypass
Function

Conference Paper · September 2021

DOI: 10.1109/EEEIC/ICPSEurope51590.2021.9584557

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Battery Emulation for Battery Modular Multilevel
Management (BM3) Converters and Reconfigurable
Batteries with Series, Parallel and Bypass Function
Tobias Högerl1 , Johannes Buberger1 , Florian Schwitzgebel1 , Lukas Obkricher1 , Julian Estaller1 ,
Michael Hohenegger1 , Anton Kersten2 , Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Manuel Kuder1 ,
Richard Eckerle1 and Thomas Weyh1
1
Bundeswehr University Munich, Department of Electrical Engineering, Neubiberg, Germany
Email: tobias.hoegerl@unibw.de
2
Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering, Gothenburg, Sweden
Email: kersten@chalmers.se

Abstract—This paper deals with the emulation of lithium-ion
battery cells/modules for the development and testing of battery
modular multilevel management converters and any kind of
reconfigurable battery systems with series, parallel and bypass
function. The developed emulator is based on a buck converter
type with an isolated input voltage supply. A circuit board
with the form factor of two cylindrical 18650 battery cells was
developed, which can function as a replacement of a real battery
cell/module for a laboratory setup. In addition to the imple-
mented safety mechanisms, such as over-current, over-voltage
and short-circuit protection, a simplified electrical equivalent
circuit model is implemented on the integrated micro controller.
Thereby, the dynamic electrical behavior of any battery cell can
be emulated with low deviations from its real battery behavior.
Index Terms—Battery electric vehicle, Battery emulation,
Battery management systems, Buck-Converter, Cell Emulation,
Hardware-in-the-Loop, Lithium-ion battery, Modular multilevel
converters, Modular multilevel inverters.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The increasing demand of automobile vehicles in combina-
tion with local emission standards requires efficient ways of
transportation [1]. Therefore, battery electric vehicles (BEVs)
enjoy rising sales figures regardless of their drawbacks in
range, cold climate performance and required charging time
in comparison to internal combustion engine vehicles [2],
[3]. In conventional BEVs, the traction battery can consist
of up to several thousand individual lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells,
which are connected into a fixed configuration [4], [5]. State-
of-the-art modular multilevel inverters (MMIs), which are
sometimes referred to as reconfigurable batteries, such as the
ones reviewed in [4]–[13], can potentially reduce the before
mentioned drawbacks as well as increase vehicles’ safety. Fur-
thermore, modular batteries based on MMIs potentially reduce
the amount of electromagnetic emissions [14]–[16], increase
This research is funded by MORE/ELAPSED as part of dtec.bw - Digitiza-
tion and Technology Research Center of the Bundeswehr which we gratefully
acknowledge.
Furthermore, the financial support provided by the Swedish Energy Agency
(Energimyndigheten) is gratefully acknowledged as well.
the partial load efficiency due to the usage of low-voltage
MOSFETs [17]–[19] and, moreover, these allow for a fault-
tolerant operation [20] and advanced battery diagnostics [21].
To enable further extensive research in the field of MMIs,
battery emulators are necessary. By the usage of emulators
instead of actual Li-Ion batteries, general safety can be in-
creased in experimental setups since emulators contain fea-
tures like over-current, over-voltage and short-circuit protec-
tion mechanisms. Furthermore, the number of potential error
sources and the overall setup time required can be reduced
by elimination of battery charging time and assurance of
correct battery voltages. Basic approaches of battery emulators
were previously reviewed by [22], [23]. The published results
do not satisfy MMIs’ dynamic requirements since the BM3
modules should be reconfigured in a typical update frequency
of 20 kHz, whereas the emulation method reaches only a
minimum latency of 100 ms or shows unstable behavior at
high update frequencies. Other approaches like the ones pub-
lished in [24], [24]–[28] focus on conventional permanently
connected battery packs’ behavior which cannot be compared
to a BM3-based vehicle. The approaches need high amounts
of computing power for the underlying simulations or do not
accomplish the requirements in battery modeling accuracy.
In contrast to [22]–[24], [24]–[28], the contribution of this
paper is to suggest a battery emulator for the modules of a
modular battery system with series, bypass and, especially,
parallel connectivity.
II. S TATE - OF - THE - ART
A. Battery Modular Multilevel Management (BM3) converter
system
As described in [4], the BM3 converter system is a battery
cell or module-based modular multilevel converter topology.
Similar as other multilevel converters, the BM3 converter
system can create multiple discrete output voltage levels, but
in addition, it can potentially replace the dedicated battery
balancing circuit of a traction battery. Each of the BM3
converter system’s modules mainly consist of a battery cell

978-1-6654-3613-7/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE

string or module, which serves as a voltage source, and a three-
switch inverter, which is needed for switching the module into
one of its three distinct switching states. As depicted in Fig. 1,
the discrete switches S1 , S2 and S3 are typically implemented
by MOSFETs due to the low cell module voltages of for
example 3.7 V (1S configuration). All three valid switching
Fig. 1. Schematic of an individual BM3 module with a Li-Ion battery cell
as a voltage source [4].
states are shown in Fig. 2 where two BM3 converter modules
are interconnected. The connection points D and C of the
first module are connected to the points A and B of the
second module, respectively. The load resistance Rload is
Fig. 2. Valid switching states of two interconnected BM3 modules according
to [4]: a) bypass connection; b) series connection; c) parallel connection.
connected between point A and D of the first and last module,
respectively. In the schematics, the MOSFETs are replaced
by ideal switches for simplification reasons. Bypassing (see
Fig. 2a) all modules is achieved by activating the switches Si1 ,
with i being the consecutive indicator for each module, and
deactivating all other switches. This leads to an output voltage
of 0 V, measured at the load resistance Rload . The second
possible switching state of each module is its series state (see
Fig. 2b). In this case only the switches Si2 are activated and,
thus, the opposing poles of each battery cell are connected. In
this way the output voltage corresponds to the sum of the two
battery cell voltages. When activating the switches Si1 and Si3
between all adjacent modules, the battery cells are connected
in parallel (see Fig. 2c). In this case, the last module of each
phase must be switched into its series state. Otherwise, no
voltage would be applied across the load resistance Rload and
the battery cells would be bypassed similar to the initially
described switching state.
By individually altering the different switching states, var-
ious voltage levels or waveforms can be generated. Thereby,
the battery cells’ DC voltages can be inverted to an AC voltage
waveform as for example demonstrated in [4], [10]. To double
the output voltage’s amplitude, an additional H-bridge inverter
can be utilized as a commutator, such as described in [29].
B. Battery emulation
In future BM3-based applications, up to several hundreds of
individual battery cells will be subjected to pulsed loads, for
example when driving an electric motor as depicted in Fig. 3
or when when being charged as described in [30]. To enable
the testing of the power electronics in a safe environment
and under the individual cells’ most varied state conditions,
different switching states and different fault cases, an emulator
for the cell network is required.
Fig. 3. Schematic of a three-phase BM3 system driving an electric motor
[30].
Since the battery cells are switched into different states and,
therefore, experience different current loads, the battery pack
cannot be emulated as a single cell similar to a system with
permanently connected cells. Thus, for each battery cell, an
individual voltage source has to be provided. These voltage
sources (cells) must each dynamically represent the battery
cell’s state model including state of charge (SoC), state of
health (SoH) and impedance behavior in accordance to the
charge/discharge process during operation.
C. Battery modeling
Since the Li-ion batteries’ voltage responses to an applied
load change have a high impact on the BM3 system’s func-
tionality, it is important to be able to reproduce a realistic cell
behavior. Therefore, an equivalent circuit model (ECM) is used
to describe the cells’ dynamic load response. As described
in [31] a typical cell model is based on a constant voltage source must also be switchable to an ’off’ state (0 V). Since the
source with an ohmic resistor (R0 ) and an inductor (LR ) in cells can be connected in parallel, series or be bypassed, the
series as well as several RC-pairs, as shown in Fig. 4. The cells themselves mainly experience pulsed currents (usually
20 kHz).
When connecting several cell emulators in parallel, the
R1 R2 R3
LR R0 maximum current should increase by the number of cells, so
that in total, a maximum current of
VOCV C1 C2 C3 Imax,tot = n · Imax,cell (4)
can be expected (3 cells in parallel means a current capa-
bility of at least 18 A as source or 9 A as sink). Self-excited
oscillations of the power supplies that exceeds the following
Fig. 4. Dynamic battery ECM with three RC-pairs [31].
time base limits, as well as voltage jumps above the tolerance
Li-Ion battery cell’s overall impedance for an ECM with three given below, shall not occur. The control speed for load steps
RC-pairs can be calculated by (0 A → 5 A → 0 A) must be correspondingly fast, so that the
deviation from the set output voltage, for both load steps is
3
X Rn tjp < 40 µs at V jp < 50 mV. The cell current limit must be
Z̄Cell,3RC = jωLR + R0 + (1) individually adjustable for each cell in ∆I = 10 mA steps.
n=1
1 + jωRn Cn
The cell voltage setting shall be individually adjustable per
As described in [31], the before shown three RC-model can cell in 10 mV increments.
be extended by an additional Warburg impedance. This model The cell impedance setting must be realized individually
is depicted in Fig. 5. The Warburg impedance element is used per cell by a hardware controlled impedance. It ranges from
to model the battery’s impedance behavior better at low load 1 mΩ to 200 mΩ, with a response time of less than 50 µs. Each
frequencies. The Warburg impedance can be calculated by voltage source represents a real battery cell’s characteristics,
i.e. SoC, SoH and impedance behavior according to a resistor,
LR R1 R2 ZW inductor and capacitor (RLC)-based ECM as described by (3).
R0 W The battery cell emulator must be able to measure the pulse
currents and calculate as well as adjust the current SoC in
RL C1 C2 the corresponding battery model via a Coulomb counter. For
VOCV
this purpose, the battery model must be calculated locally on
the device because of the fast response times. The integrated
Coulomb counter is a core component since it delivers an input
signal for the stored battery cell model. Therefore, its update
Fig. 5. Dynamic battery ECM with three RC-pairs and an additional Warburg
impedance element [31]. rate and accuracy influence the accuracy of the entire system.
The Coulomb counter’s update rate must be at least twice as
1 high as the measured signal’s frequency.
Z̄W = (1 − j)σω − 2 (2) An external query of the battery states must be possible with
Hence, the three RC-model’s total impedance including the at least 1 Hz via the network. An external trigger initiates a
Warburg impedance is given by time-synchronous (T < 5 µs) current and voltage measurement
on all cells. Within the emulated cell, current and voltage
RL + jωLR R1 must be measured simultaneously with at least 200 kHz for
Z̄Cell,Warburg = + R0 +
jωLR RL 1 + jωR1 C1 each cell. The triggered measurement duration must be at
1
R2 + (1 − j)σω − 2 least 100 ms, at maximum sample frequency. Because of the
+ − 1 measured data’s large amount generated in a short period
1 + jωC2 (R2 + (1 − j)σω 2 )
(3) of time, an integrated memory module must be installed on
the emulator. This serves as a temporary storage for the
III. BATTERY EMULATION REQUIREMENTS measurement data, which will be read out afterwards via the
The cell emulator can consist of any desired number of network.
cells depending on which output voltage is desired. Each cell The current measurement’s accuracy shall be better or equal
simulates the characteristics of a real battery cell in charge and to 1 mA in the measurement range below 1 A and 10 mA in
discharge operation. The battery model’s characteristics need the measurement range above 1 A. The voltage measurement’s
to be configurable through a user interface. The individual deviation shall be better or equal to ±5 mV. Ethernet or Ether-
emulated cells are connected via BM3 modules. Each cell CAT should provide the data transmission while control and
contains a voltage source, which provides a voltage of at least readout of the data shall be possible via MATLAB or Script.
2 V to 5 V with 6 A source current and −3 A sink current. A The isolation voltage to ground potential as well as between
cell’s continuous power should be at least 25 W. The voltage the cells must be at least 200 V. A short-circuit and overload
protection must be provided to protect the voltage sources IV. H ARDWARE AND SOFTWARE DESIGN
and the tested power electronics circuitry. A summary of the For the purpose of emulation, the behavior of a real cell
battery emulator’s main requirements is given in Table I. is divided into subsections, which have to be individually
realized in hardware. They are divided into long and short-
TABLE I
term, charging and discharging as well as impedance behavior.
BATTERY EMULATOR ’ S MAIN REQUIREMENTS The cell emulator’s key components are a laboratory power
supply with a buck converter connected to each output (see
Specification Fig. 6). Each combination acts as one emulated cell and
Requirement
Details Value can deliver a maximum output voltage of 5 V as well as a
Voltage range Possible single source voltages 0 V & 2-5 V maximum current of 10 A. This results in a maximum power
Cell maximum source current 6A output of 25 W per channel and thus fulfills the current,
Cell maximum sink current −3 A voltage and power capability requirements.
Current capability
System maximum source current n · 6A
System maximum sink current n · (−3 A)
Maximum power Single cell continuous power 25 W
Current limit Adjustable step size 10 mA
Voltage limit Adjustable step size 10 mV
Load jump Time based deviation at <50 mV <40 µs
Range per cell 1-200 mΩ
Impedance
Response time <50 µs
Coulomb counter Update frequency 100 kHz
Current accuracy (<1 A) 1 mA
Measurement Current accuracy (>1 A) 1 mA
Voltage accuracy ±5 mV
Isolation voltage Electrodes to ground potential 200 V Fig. 6. Schematic overview of n parallel cell emulators in a battery cell
holder.
Usual update frequency 1 Hz
Communication Delay after burst trigger <5 µs The long-term behavior includes SoC and SoH mapping.
Burst update frequency 100 kHz For this purpose, a bidirectional current sensor is placed at
Burst measurement duration 100 ms the emulator’s output to monitor the charge carrier flow Q
in both directions. The measurements are fed back to the
micro controller (µC) to set the reference output voltage Vref
Different discharge currents can lead to differences in the accordingly at the buck converter (see Fig. 7). The actual
SoC or the cell voltage. These lead to equalizing currents output voltage Vact is also measured and fed back to the µC to
[32] between the voltage sources when switching the cells correct the voltage set at the buck converter. The output voltage
in parallel. Although the resulting currents will be reduced by is set via a µC-driven, digital potentiometer, connected to the
dedicated algorithms such as reviewed in [33], the robustness feedback input and to the output voltage via a voltage divider
of the system must be such that any equalizing currents occur- (see Fig. 8).
ring between the cells in parallel operation do not cause any
damage in the emulator’s circuitry. In addition, an operating
strategy must be provided to control the equalizing currents.
Focus lies on the emulated cell’s voltage oscillation avoidance
when connected in parallel with other cells. The measurement
of the Coulomb counter must be fast and accurate enough to
cope with the small equalizing current flowing between two
cells with different voltage levels when switched into parallel
Fig. 7. Simplified control loop of the cell emulation.
connection. Due to the system’s losses, as reviewed in [18],
a temperature-controlled cooling or heat dissipation system The output voltage results to
must be provided to ensure operation for a time period of
at least 1800 s (length of the Worldwide-harmonized Light R1
Vout = Vref · (5)
vehicle Test Procedure). R2 + 1
The cells shall be set up in a maximum of three 19 inch For the purposes of energy efficiency and fast response times,
control cabinets in the form of card slots, whereby several the µC uses a lookup table for SoC and SoH which can be
cells may be combined in one slot. The peripheral devices for programmed to match with different cell properties like cell
implementing the functional scope are also to be included in aging effects, cathode chemistry and form factors as well as
this setup like the required protective circuits to ensure safe damage symptoms. The short-term behavior includes the map-
operation in the laboratory. ping of faster and transient events like the impedance behavior
 A battery cell’s frequency response results from chemical
processes and material as well as structure-related properties.
These can be represented by an ECM. Achieving a frequency
response similar to a real battery cell is one of this paper’s ma-
jor goals. By driving flexible and configurable resistance and
capacitance networks with the µC and a corresponding lookup
table, a wide variety of cells, cell types and aging states can be
represented. The ECM used to accomplish a realistic battery
cell behavior was derived from [31]. A battery electrochemical
impedance spectroscopy (EIS) spectra is shown in Fig. 10.
For the time being, the inductive part is neglected, because
of the increased difficulties in switching the inductance with
transistors due to the current-driven behavior. An EIS of
Fig. 8. Implementation of the feedback voltage divider with a digital
potentiometer including the control via µC and I2C bus. the electronic circuit will also show whether the inductive
behavior can be influenced by the line inductance of the power
supply and discharge lines. An alternative approach includes
with load dips and peaks. The emulator’s short-term behavior pluggable RLC-modules to adjust the frequency spectrum.
is particularly important since pulses with a frequency up The modules, which are pre-assembled to match a certain
to 20 kHz through BM3 module reconfigurations are to be frequency behavior and different cell types, can be connected
expected. Because of the buck converter’s low bandwidth, a to the cell emulator via defined plug-in connections.
fast responding regulator is connected in series with the buck
converter to improve the cell emulator’s response time and
impedance behavior. The output regulator compensates the
highly dynamic voltage dips and peaks but otherwise follows
the specified output voltage.
The emulated cell’s impedance behavior can be controlled
by a binary graded resistor network as shown in Fig. 9, which
is substituted by a digital potetinometer with 127 resistor
values, in favour of a smaller PCB footprint. Both the buck
converter and the linear regulator have a digital potentiometer
in the voltage divider of the feedback branch. The regulation
of the resistor network, and thus of the emulated cell, is
realized via the µC which receives the output voltage Vact
as well as the charge flow Q as input. The buck converter’s

Fig. 10. Relationship between the EIS spectra and the equivalent circuit
model [4].

Two communication systems are used throughout the circuit

as depicted in Fig. 6. The first serial bus for communication
on the PCB is an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus for
Fig. 9. Binary cascaded resistor network connected to the feedback pin (FB). communication between the µC and the peripheral components
The parallel resistors R2n (with n as the number of parallel resistors) can be such as the digital potentiometer. The second digital serial
connected to ground (GND) via the µC. The resistor network is substituted
by a digital potentiometer. communication system is a Universal Asynchronous Receiver
Transmitter (UART) for communication between the emula-
output voltage with extended voltage divider, where R2s limits tion modules and the master unit.
the minimal resistance of R2 and R2p limits the maximal As the emulated cell will be integrated into the volume of
resistance, follows two cylindrical 18650 cells (VOL=65 mm × 51 mm × 10 mm)
without active cooling, the circuit design is focused on energy
(R2s + R2dp ) · R2p efficiency with the disadvantages of a slightly larger footprint.
Vout = Vref · R1 · ( + 1)−1 (6) The PCB itself comprises thermally optimized design. This
R2s + R2dp + R2p
includes the use of thermal vias to achieve more thermal Tab. II). The output was then loaded with a resistor of RL =
capacity by connecting the circuit board’s copper layers which 0.5 Ω. The results show a stronger overshoot similar to Fig.12
leads to a wider and faster spread of heat. The usage of copper at a higher output voltage and a correspondingly longer settling
filled areas achieves both a larger thermal capacity and a time.
maximized cooling area without the use of a dedicated heat
sink. If a higher output power is required, the use of heat sinks TABLE II
or cooling structures would be unavoidable. U NDERSHOOT AT DIFFERENT VOLTAGE LEVEL
Standardized pin headers with a 2.54 mm pitch are used for V out Undershoot
the PCB’s power connection in the laboratory setup, as can (at RL =0.5 Ω) ∆t Vmax V max -V max(t0 +10ms)
be seen in Fig. 11. In the final version illustrated in Fig. 6, 1.8 V 30.48 µs 54.11 mV 11.1 mV
6.1 V 73.3 µs 316.47 mV 262.3 mV
these will be replaced by metal board edges so the usage of 3.94 V (Fig.12, a)) 424.7 µs 420.82 mV 413.2 mV
the emulator board is possible in a conventional 18650 cell 3.95 V (Fig.12, b)) 82.39 µs 407.58 mV 179.5 mV
holder.

The undershoot’s duration is mainly dependent on the size

of the output capacitance and the load resistance as can be seen
from Fig.12, which depicts the output voltage at a load jump
with and without an additional output capacitance.Therefore,
output voltage smoothing must be balanced against the sys-
tem’s reaction time to load changes.

Fig. 11. First hardware power stage of the cell emulation.

V. E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The following experiments were performed with the follow-
ing laboratory equipment:
• Power Supply: Rohde & Schwarz, Hameg, HMP4040 set
to 8 V and 10 A
• Measurement via an Analog Discovery I
• µC: STM32F411 ”BlackPill” Development Board
• Buck Converter: TPS54A24
As an initial test of the maximum control speed and the
follow-up behavior of the buck converter’s output, a µC was
Fig. 12. Dynamic behavior when a load step occurs from OL (open loop)
programmed to switch the binary cascaded resistors to GND to 0.5 Ω a) at Vcell = 3.94 V with additional 470 µF output capacitor b) at
according to a generated sine signal with an amplitude of Vcell = 3.94 V without additional output capacitance.
V̂sig = 1.5 V and a frequency of up to fsig = 1 kHz. This
results in a sine-shaped output voltage of Vout = [1.8; 6.1] V The ability of connecting two ore more modules in parallel
with an amplitude of V̂ = 3 V at the given frequency. to receive higher output currents is a major requirement. To
The maximum frequency achieved by the buck converter test this, a module was first loaded with a load of RL = 0.5 Ω
is fsw,max = 910 Hz. From this frequency upwards, signal load while the temperature winding was recorded with a
distortion starts. The blocking capacity on the input side thermal imaging camera and the drawn current was measured.
is increased to Cin = 1.8 mF after this test, which leads Subsequently, two modules were connected in parallel and
to a reduction of the ripple on the power supply side to exposed with a common load of RL = 0.5 Ω. Again, both
Vrip = 500 mV. the temperature development and the current drawn per board
To test the response time at different output voltages, the were measured comparatively. The results given in Tab. III
buck converter was set to its minimum and maximum output show that a parallel connection of two modules results in
voltage at a fixed switching frequency of fsw = 356 kHz (see the desired halving of the current through each cell. Heating
 TABLE III
T EMPERATURE AND CURRENT MEASUREMENT OF PARALLEL CONNECTED
EMULATOR MODULES
Modules 1s 1s2p
V cell 4V 4V 4V
Icell 8.02 A 4.12 A 3.89 A
Itot 8.02 A 8.01 A
T 100°C 50 °C
measurement with the thermal imaging camera also shows
a reduction in power dissipation. However, this only occurs
when the modules’ output voltages are balanced.
The SoC calculation and the output voltage setting, depend-
ing on the cell capacitance and the current, is implemented by
software according to the flowchart depicted in Fig. 13. The
main loop (see Fig. 13 a) checks constantly for an updated
SoC value and controls the output voltage Vout accordingly.
An interrupt routine (see Fig. 13 b) starts when the interrupt
timer runs out and measures the current. It then calculates the
actual SoCact .
Fig. 13. Core functionality running on the controller without regulation of
the output voltage. a) Main loop with lookup table as well as the setting
of the output voltage b) Timed interrupt loop for measuring the current and
calculating the current SoC.
The resulting output voltage curve can be seen in Fig. 14.
A negative cell current discharges the emulated battery until
a predefined end of discharge voltage VEoDV = 2.68 V is
reached, whereas a positive cell current charges the emulated
battery until its voltage reaches the preconfigured end of
charge voltage VEoCV = 4.04 V. With ICell = 2 A instead of
ICell = 1 A of current flow, the charge/discharge time is halved
as expected at low C-rates. Dynamic voltage components were
not yet implemented in the battery model. The EoCV and
Fig. 14. Cell voltage and SoC of a 18650 Li-Ion battery cell a) at 1 A
load/charge current b) at 2 A load/charge current.
EoDV can also be freely adjusted to emulate an overcharged
or deep discharged battery cell, respectively.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, an approach for the emulation of Lithium-ion
battery cells has been suggested and demonstrated. The emu-
lator has been realized in hardware in form of a simple PCB
with the physical dimensions of two cylindrical 18650 battery
cells. In this way the emulator board can easily fit inside a
battery cell holders. The suggested emulator is based on a buck
converter topology with an isolated power supply. A voltage
regulator in the form of a digital potentiometer and a µC has
been used to adjust and control the emulator’s output voltage.
The software running on the µC includes a lookup table
with the results of either a simulated or a measured battery
cell characteristic (current and voltage) to emulate battery
modules’ dynamic behavior. Furthermore, the integrated buck
converter is able to emulate the cell’s long-term behavior such
as the state of charge, influencing the open circuit voltage.
Additionally, with the help of the µC intercircuit and inter-
system communication can be established through I2C and
UART. The emulators output capacitance should be selected
large enough to smoothen the output voltage. Moreover, it is
possible to dynamically connect several modules in parallel,
while small equalizing currents are triggered due to the voltage
differences, which can be handled by the circuitry. Thus, it
has been shown that the battery emulator is suitable for the
usage of the intended application, research and development
of modular multilevel converters.
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