Assisting Converter Based Integrated Battery Management System for Automotive Applications

This paper introduces a new battery management architecture for automotive applications based on multi phase dual active bridge (DAB) converter. This new architecture integrates the voltage step-up, balancing, and charging functions inside a single converter topology to present a cost-effective and an energy efficient solution. The step-up function is obtained using assisting conversion concept and hence high power processing efficiency and small converter volume are achieved. The operation of the system is regulated by a hardware-efficient digital controller that provides control of all of the three functions at the same time. Experimental results obtained with a 24-to-48V, 200W, 100 KHz converter for small scooters demonstrate that the assisting DAB converter is capable of providing the three previously mentioned functions while running at a peak efficiency of 95.4% and processing only a 50% of the output power.