48V board offers complete battery monitoring & safety system

The 48V board provides a complete battery monitoring and safety system on a single, compact PCB. It measures the flow of current through the battery, and the voltage and temperature both of the entire battery and of individual lithium cells.

The board’s high-side current sensor is connected to the battery’s positive terminal. This has enabled ams to include a battery disconnect switch on the board which is automatically actuated when the current sensor detects an overload condition. This protects the battery’s cells from damage and helps to prolong the life of the battery.

The ams board also implements an innovative method of cell balancing in hardware, without the intervention of an MCU or processor.The board compares the voltages of individuell cells and switches the charge and discharge current between cells in order to maintain an equal voltage across all cells.

Because the entire 48V battery monitoring system operates without complex application software, it is quick and easy to implement in a vehicle’s power management system. It also makes it easier for power system designers to achieve compliance with the ISO 26262 functional safety standard, because it eliminates the need to develop, test and verify the safe functioning of complex algorithms for error compensation and cell balancing.

‘The battery monitoring reference board from ams shows that 48V power systems in vehicles do not have to be complex or difficult to implement. The high performance of the ams board is due to the precision and accuracy of its analogue components and on-board 48V precision attenuator. This means that it can do without the complex error compensation software and high-end MCU required by other 48V battery monitoring systems’, said Sabine Jud, Marketing Manager, Mobility Sensors Product Line, ams.