Technical Paper
Functional Safety for Battery Monitoring Integrated Circuits
2017-03-28
2017-01-1202
The Battery Monitoring Integrated Circuit (BMIC) is a key technology for Battery Electronics in the electrification of vehicles. Generally speaking, every production hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicle uses some type of BMIC to monitor the voltage of each lithium battery cell. In order to achieve Functional Safety for the traction battery packs for these electrified vehicles, most designs require higher ASIL ratings for the BMIC such as C or D. For the entire market of available BMIC’s, there is a generic feature set that can be found on almost every IC on the market, such as a front end multiplexer, one or more precision references, one or more Analog to Digital (A/D) converters, a power supply, communications circuits, and window comparators. There is also a fairly consistent suite of self-diagnostics, available on just about every available BMIC, to detect failures and enable achievement of the appropriate ASIL rating.