Development of PLC based Communication Architecture for Battery Management System

Lithium-ion-based rechargeable batteries require a significant amount of maintenance in order to sustain their capacity over a long period. At present, almost all electric vehicles are using lithium ion batteries as a power source because of their high charge storage capacity. Every electric car is also equipped with a Battery Management System (BMS) to maintain the battery pack. This paper presents the experimental development of an internal communication architecture for BMS using power line communication. The objective is to design and develop a low cost, flexible and efficient BMS system with plug and play concept. At present, these systems are using a considerable amount of cables for managing a single cell of lithium ion based rechargeable battery packs. The use of power line as a platform for BMS communication will completely remove the burden of wire harness and will reduce the weight of the battery pack.The setup is developed using the Cypress PSOC 5lp processor because of its digital and analog capabilities. The concept was first implemented on two battery cells communicating over power line, later it has been successfully tested on four series connected battery cells. The measurement results shows that the methodology adopted to implement power line technique for BMS communication is appropriate and feasible, and has a potential to cover all requirements of the battery management system.