Japanese electronics, electrical equipment and information technology firm Toshiba is planning to launch a new lithium-ion battery monitor chipset for automotive applications.
The new battery monitor chipset is designed to detect the remaining battery level, equalise battery levels and detect abnormal battery status in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs).
In addition, Toshiba new chipset comprises TB9141FG monitoring IC and a TMPM358FDTFG microcontroller.
TB9141FG, which utilises 96V high-voltage process, is designed to monitor a 16-cell Li-ion battery with a single IC.
By using differential signaling in a daisy chain communication link between two or more TB9141FGs, the monitoring IC can communicate in a noisy environment.
The monitoring IC, which has ±2mV cell voltage measurement accuracy, incorporates a cell balance switch and is able to measure battery voltage while cell balancing.
TMPM358FDTFG is a 32-bit RISC microcontroller built around an ARM Cortex-M32 core and is compliant with functional safety standards (IEC61508 / ISO26262).
Incorporating a backup power for 16-bit pre scalar counter and 32-bit up counter, TMPM358FDTFG will retain stand-by SRAM data which contains a battery parameters.
When not monitoring batteries the device can stand by on low power, reducing the power consumption of the total system.
Toshiba said it will start sample shipments of the new chipset in February 2013 and mass production in April 2014.
