Enhanced hotplug protection in BMS applications. Part I: Theoretical Aspects and Practical Issues

As the electric vehicles market is rapidly growing, car makers and Tier 1s are focusing their efforts in optimizing ECUs to increase safety and reliability at an affordable price. In battery management applications, a huge challenge is made on IC suppliers to develop innovative designs enabling better performances at a reduced cost. Enhanced devices providing superior reliability, accuracy and robustness using less external components are becoming a must have in the product portfolio in order to shrink the bill of material of the BMS. Hotplug has always been one of the most critical issues in BMS, since a significant number of external components is usually needed to withstand it. In this paper, all the theoretical aspects and practical issues concerning hotplug in real BMS systems will be discussed.