Wireless battery management system

In this paper, we present an innovative wireless battery management system (WBMS™)that addresses the issues of the conventional BMS architecture. The WBMS™ adopts wireless communication technologies based on a proprietary Wireless Battery Area Network (WiBaAN™) protocol [1]. The WBMS™ consists of a multitude of energy-autonomous micro-sensors mounted on each battery cell, and a master module that collects and processes the data from the micro-sensors. The WiBaAN™ protocol defines the syntax, semantics and synchronization of the messages between the sensors and the master module. The WBMS™ will enable a battery pack that is simple, light, reliable, and most importantly, inexpensive. The new wireless architecture can completely eliminate the sensing wire-harness and connectors. The WBMS™ is designed in such a way that a single master module can communicate with up to a few thousands of sensors. Its star topology makes it possible to eliminate the intermediate slave modules between the master module and the sensors. No isolators are needed due to the wireless nature of the communication. Reduced number of components and connections means less failure points, especially in a harshly vibratory environment.