Battery Management System

A battery management system (BMS) can be comprised of many functional blocks, including cutoff FETs, a fuel gauge monitor, cell voltage monitor, cell voltage balance, real-time clock (RTC), temperature monitors, and a state machine. There are also many types of battery management ICs available. The grouping of the functional blocks varies widely – from a simple analog front-end that offers balancing and monitoring, and requires a microcontroller (MCU), to a standalone, highly integrated solution that runs autonomously.

This reference design utilizes an ISL94212 Li-ion battery manager IC, which supervises up to 12 series of connected cells. The device provides accurate monitoring and three cell balancing modes – manual balancing mode, timed balancing and auto balance mode with extensive system diagnostics functions. The BMS IC communicates to a host MCU via an SPI interface and to other BMS IC devices using a robust, proprietary, two-wire daisy chain system.

System Benefits:

• Highly integrated MCU
• Supports both standalone and daisy-chained configurations
• GUI provided export option for generation of detailed register and/or SPI communications log files