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Advanced Battery Management for the Rest of Us (.PDF Download)

Oct. 15, 2018
Advanced Battery Management for the Rest of Us (.PDF Download)

Battery management, like military radars and supersonic jets, is a sophisticated technology that’s been out of reach for engineers who don’t have special clearance or deep pockets—until now.

Charging and fuel gauging—at the heart of every battery-management system—are critical components of any mobile or IoT application. Battery performance relies on a high-quality battery model to drive the fuel-gauging algorithm. Extraction of the right model for the chosen battery is difficult, expensive work. In fact, only a few large manufacturers have the resources to develop such models.

The accessibility of accurate models can be a huge barrier to the proliferation of low-volume portable applications. This article presents a disruptive approach to cracking the battery-management barrier with a quick, cost-effective, high-performance solution.

Fuel Gauging for the Few

The release of energy from a battery adds up to nothing less than a controlled explosion. The energy stored in the battery (capacity) depends on load and temperature. Hence, developers recognize the importance of characterizing the battery under various conditions. Once a model tuned to the battery behavior is extracted, it’s loaded into the fuel-gauge chip. This closely supervised process results in accurate gauging and safe battery charging and discharging.

1. It can be time-consuming to maximize battery performance and minimize the state-of-charge (SOC) error while correctly predicting if the battery is nearly empty.

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