Implementation of a wireless battery management system (WBMS)

Abstract

This paper introduces a wireless battery management system (BMS) based on Bluetooth technology. With the burgeoning use of battery packs in electric and hybrid vehicles, battery management has become a significant area for improvement. Typical battery packs consist of many individual battery cells, and total-pack performance can only be optimized by ensuring level charge and discharge performance across all individual constituent cells. Current battery pack technology relies on wired sensor connections to all individual cells to track temperature and voltage of each cell, and adjust charge and discharge rates accordingly. Packs with large numbers of individual cells typically have thousands of wire terminations that are susceptible to mechanical failure. This can lead to premature pack failure. Moreover, when an individual battery cell fails under this scenario, and entire pack rebuild is required. The proposed wireless battery management minimizes the failure points in a battery pack. Furthermore, it makes individual components more readily replaced without an entire rebuild, while also eliminating the impact of system modifications on bulky wiring harnesses. The implemented system performed similarly to a wired system in comparison tests, while saving weight and significantly reducing failure points.

Critical Review of Intelligent Battery Systems: Challenges, Implementation, and Potential for Electric Vehicles

“…However, the usage in other applications like smart grids and ESS might be more promising. The WBMSs presented in the literature use different wireless technologies like ZigBee [599,600], Bluetooth [601], and Wi-Fi [571,602]. An approach where the CMU is integrated inside the cell is proposed by Schneider et al [566].…”

Low Power Modular Battery Management System with a Wireless Communication Interface

“…Communication of all SUs with the BMS master controller (BMC) requires approximately 64 physical connections for the simplest configuration, and the same number of galvanic separators is needed. Several prototype solutions of distributed BMSs using wireless (radio) connections have been presented in the last few years [31][32][33][34]. The principle of inter-module wireless communication is the same as for systems with wired communication (Figure 2) and ensures the logical connection of the master BMC with all SUs.…”

A Survey of Wireless Battery Management System: Topology, Emerging Trends, and Challenges

“…Few proposed architectures also employed memory units in each sensor node. Possessing in-node memory allows the system to recover data once the connection is restored after a temporary connection failure, resulting in enhanced data integrity and system reliability [13].…”