Microcontroller for automotive battery management systems

With the introduction of the PSoC 4 High Voltage Precision Analog (HVPA)-144K microcontroller, Infineon Technologies AG as addressed the automotive battery management sector by combining high-precision analog and high-voltage subsystems on a single chip. It delivers a fully integrated embedded system for monitoring and managing automotive 12V lead-acid batteries, which is crucial for the 12V power supply of vehicles' electrical systems. The new microcontroller is ISO26262 compliant, allowing compact and safe intelligent battery sensing and battery management in modern vehicles.

The device's dual high-resolution sigma-delta ADCs, together with four digital filtering channels, facilitate accurate measurement of the battery's state-of-charge (SoC) and state-of-health (SoH) by measuring key parameters such as voltage, current, and temperature with an accuracy of up to ±0.1%. The device features two PGAs with automatic gain control, allowing fully autonomous control of the analog front end without software intervention. The use of shunt-based current sensing for batteries provides a higher accuracy than conventional Hall sensors.

An integrated 12V LDO (42V tolerant) permits the device to be supplied directly from the 12V lead-acid battery without the necessity for an external power supply. An integrated transceiver enables direct communication with the LIN bus. The product meets the functional safety requirements of ASIL-C according to ISO26262.

The Arm Cortex-M0+ MCU on which the device is based operates at up to 48MHz with up to 128KB of code flash, 8KB of data flash and 8KB of SRAM, all with ECC. It also includes digital peripherals such as four timers/counters/PWMs and a serial communication block that can be configured as an I2C/SPI/UART.

The device is supported by automotive-quality software. The company's Automotive Peripheral Driver Library (AutoPDL) and Safety Library (SafeTlib) are developed according to the standard automotive software development process. They are A-SPICE compliant, following the MISRA 2012 AMD1 and CERT C, and ISO26262 compliant.

With the device's introduction, the company has laid the foundation for expanding its PSoC microcontroller portfolio to include Li-ion battery management systems for EVs.