2012 IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference, Oct.

9-12,2012, Seoul, Korea

Battery Voltage Sensorless Charge Equalizer

Using the Multi-Winding Transformer
Chang-Soon Lim, Rae-Young Kim, and Dong-Seok Hyun
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Hanyang University, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 133-791, Korea
dreamdepot@hanyang.ac.kr, rykim@hanyang.ac.kr, and dshyun@hanyang.ac.kr

Abstract- A simple and easy magnetic coupling equalizer for a

series-connected lithium-ion battery string is presented. The
equalizer applies identical duty cycle to all active power switches
without using the voltage sensing circuits and the secondary side
components of multi-winding transformer. During the turn-on
switching interval, the equalizer automatically transfers energy
from the high-voltage battery cells to the low-voltage battery
cells. The proposed equalizer can effectively reduce size, cost,
and design complexity of the equalizer system.

I. INTRODUCTION

Lithium-ion battery is currently considered to be one of the

most popular types of rechargeable battery because it is the
high energy density, no memory effect, and the very low self
discharge when not in use. Therefore, the lithium-ion
batteries have been widely used in many practical
applications, such as electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid electric
vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV),
electric scooters (ESs), and telecom energy systems.
However, a lithium-ion battery pack must incorporate
many discrete lithium-ion battery cells connected in series to
achieve the high power requirements. Since each cell
connected in series has different characteristics in terms of
chemical and electrical, the imbalance among lithium-ion
battery cells should be generated by repeated charge and
discharge process. These imbalance battery states severely
decrease the energy storage capacity and battery lifetime.
Furthermore, there may be battery explosion or fire in the
worst case. Therefore, in order to prevent these problems, the
equalization circuit must be necessary for a series-connected
lithium-ion battery string.
Up to the present, several equalization circuits and
algorithms have been developed. The non-magnetic coupling
equalizers may implement the imprecise equalization because
they transfer the electric charges from the top cell to the
bottom cell in phases [1]-[10]. On the other hand, since the
magnetic coupling equalizers directly operate battery cell
switches selected by the control algorithms, they can achieve
the precise equalization [11]-[16].
However, all battery cell voltages must be measured by
voltage sensing circuits to select switches in the magnetic
coupling equalizer. Furthermore, the magnetic coupling
equalizers have the secondary side of the multi-winding
transformer to reset the magnetizing current to zero before the

Fig. 1. Proposed magnetic coupling equalizer.

end of the switching period. The voltage sensing circuits and

the secondary side components increase size and cost of the
overall equalizer system.
To avoid these problems, this paper proposes the magnetic
coupling equalizer system without using the voltage sensing
circuits and the secondary side components of multi-winding
transformer. A description of the overall system configuration
and the operation principle is given and the experimental
results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the
proposed equalizer.

II. PROPOSED BATTERY EQUALIZER

A. System Configuration

Fig. 1 shows the proposed magnetic coupling equalizer. The

proposed equalizer includes N battery cells connected in
series, where each battery cell connects an active power
switch S and a multi-winding transformer T. A linear
electrical battery model VE, which consists of an internal
resistor RE and a voltage source eE, is used to represent the
characteristic of a battery cell. The multi-winding transformer
T is modeled as a magnetizing inductance Lm, N leakage

978-1-4673-0954-7112/$31.00 2012

IEEE

789

+
V/,/,1

T,TLm

, ;,+

CS,Vl

ll.m

{]

Lm

lLm

(a) mode I

(b) mode 2

Fig. 2 Operating modes of the proposed equalizer.

inductances Llio and an ideal transformer which has a turns

ratio of (Nt :.. -:NN =1:.. -:1). The main feature in the proposed
equalizer is that the secondary side of the multi-winding
transformer does not exist for the transformer reset. Each
active power switch has a snubber circuit, which consists of
the capacitor CSN and the resistor R,sN, to mitigate voltage
spike between the power MOSFET drain and source at the
turn-off.

Sl

____

S2

____

S3 _-I--

b)
c)
d)

e)

A series-connected battery pack consists of three

battery cells.
Three active power switches (Sf, Sb and S3) are
ideal except for the switch body diodes.
An identical duty cycle d is applied to three active
power switches.
When three switches are turned on, the voltage
across the magnetizing inductance Lm is the average
voltage Vaver of three battery cell voltages.
Battery cell and average voltages
: V/JI > Vaver > V1i2 > Vw

f)

The magnetizing inductance is large enough so that

the multi-winding transformer has the very small
magnetizing energy.

The steady-state operation of the proposed equalizer

includes two modes during one switching period Ts. The
operating modes and theoretical waveforms are shown in
Figs.2 and 3, respectively.
1) Mode 1 [to, tJ J : At to, three switches (Sf, Sb and S3) are
turned on simultaneously. Then, there are three loops forming
three equations. Each loop equation can be expressed as
follows:

---1-

___

___

iIC--___+-----4-C_
b

a)

r===
---L-C

--------------------------.

-------------____t------------'

k....

B. Operation Mode Analysis

In order to simply the analysis for operation mode, the

following assumptions are made.

c===

--------------------------.

----------__+------------_>;_----.

"

____

"i

,i

'

---+---:!
:
-+---
-+----

iLm

____

K=

--!

____

-+.
=1

VD'\'I _

__

=_
....
. ....

____________

----'I_--___

________

.
VnS3

---,

.
, ----
:1 ,-: f------d=
:.0..
II
10
..

Fig. 3. Operating waveforms of the proposed equalizer.

(1)
Equation (1) describes that the cell current iN is decided by
the battery cell voltage and the average voltage. The positive
value of cell current means that the battery cell gives the
energy to the other battery cells. On the other hand, the
negative value of cell current means that the battery cell
receives the energy from the other battery cells.
The relationship among the magnetizing current iLm and cell
currents i], ib i3 can be expressed as follows:

790

(2)

DC power supply

The voltage across the magnetizing inductance is

L diLm
Vlm=
"
dt

(3)

111--

Since the magnetlZlng inductance is large enough, the

magnetizing current iLm is very small compared to battery cell
currents if, ib i3.
2) Mode 2 [tJ, t2 J : At tf, three switches (Sf, Sb and S3) are
turned off simultaneously. Then, each cell current flows
through the snubber circuit. At this time, the resonance
between inductors (Lim Llkh LZkb and Llk3) and capacitors (CSNf,
C.\'Nb and CSN3) causes the snubber capacitor to charge and
discharge. In this mode, three loop equations exist. Each loop
equation can be expressed as follows:

Fig. 4. Test setup for the proposed equalizer system.

TABLE I

EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS
I

(4)

Parameters

Battery internal resistances

Switching frequency

C. Analysis of the Multi- Winding Transformer

Magnetizing inductances

The values of magnetizing inductance and leakage

inductances of the multi-winding transformer are selected to
apply the average voltage of battery cells to transformer tap
voltage when switches are turned on.
Using equations (1) to (3), the transformer tap voltage VTP
and the cell current iN can be expressed as
dim
d (.
VTP = Lm = Lm- 1[
dt
dt

+12 +1,

Leakage inductances
Turns ratio
Initial battery cell voltages
Snubber capacitance
Snubber resistances

3.8 Ah

Ru" = 0.05 ohm;

j,= 10 kHz
L",= 12. 7 mH
I" = 3. 1 !IH
NJ : N2= 1:1
VU! > VIJ2> VU3

c.", = 4.7uF
RSN = 100 ohm

(II)

(5)
Equation (11) means that the transformer tap voltage VTP can
be expressed by the average voltage Vaver of three battery cells
during the mode 1.

(6)

(7)

III.

(8)
If the multi-winding transformer is in an ideal state, it is
possible to assume the following:
(9)

Using equations (5) to (9), the transformer tap voltage

defined as

Value

Three lithium-ion batteries

(BI, B2, and B3)

VTP

is

(10)
If the value of the magnetizing inductance is much
higher than the value of the leakage inductance,
equation (10) can be rewritten as

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In order to verify the theoretical operation and evaluate the

performance of the proposed equalizer, a complete equalizer
prototype was built and tested. Fig. 4 shows the test setup of
the proposed equalizer and associated instruments. It
consisted of the proposed equalizer, a DSP (TMS320F28335)
board, a battery stack, and a DC power supply. The
experimental conditions are summarized in Table I.
Fig. 5(a) shows the gate signal and voltage between drain
and source for the three switches. When three switches (Sf, Sb
and S3) are turned off simultaneously, the resonance between
inductors and capacitors begins. Fig. 5(b) shows the three
battery cell currents, where the battery cell I gives the energy
to the battery cell 2 and 3 during the turn-on switching
interval.
Fig. 6 shows the experimental results of charging with the
proposed magnetic coupling equalizer. All battery cells are
charged up to about 3.24V and voltage differences between

791

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3.15 ----

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VDS1. VDS2 VD.13
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... ;...... ('
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T + i j + r +++
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3.03

time [25us/div]
(a)

if

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-- -

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o
10 20 30 40 50
0 70 80 90 100 110 120 130

[500mA/div]

-- .

--

-.

"-

.-

-" - . . - "

1 r'"

,,

.,

,
,

,
,

,I

I
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tim

[m]

I,

I
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I
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(a)

;:
;
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i2 [500mA/div]

..

i3

[500mA/div]

0.01
o

I\...

(b)

time [25us/div]

-0.01

Fig. 5.
Experimental waveforms of the proposed magnetic coupling
equalizer. (a) Gate signal and voltage between drain and source for the three
switches. (b) Three battery cell currents.

battery cells are gradually reduced to about zero. This means

that the equalization for battery cells is well performed by the
proposed equalizer.

In this paper, a simple and easy magnetic coupling equalizer

has been presented for a series-connected lithium-ion battery
string. The proposed equalizer applies identical duty cycle to
all active power switches without using the voltage sensing
circuits and the secondary side components of multi-winding
transformer. Therefore, the proposed magnetic coupling
equalizer can effectively reduce size, cost, and design
complexity of the overall system. The experimental results
demonstrate that the proposed magnetic coupling equalizer is
an excellent candidate for use in series-connected lithium-ion
battery string.
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,
,

,
,

-+-.----.----.--i..
.

..

10

10

.
.

. . -.

.
.

30

40

. . -.

50

!.

.
.

-i.- T
- ;!'!'.. .......,
.

- . -.!--.-- .-..

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tilO

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[lO]

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