Software Update of a Decentralized, Intelligent Battery Management System Based on Multi-Microcomputers

In order to increase reliability, scalability and fail safety of battery management systems (BMSs), a decentralized BMS consisting of peer nodes is proposed. To ensure complete autonomy each node is equipped with its own microcontroller. Each manages the charge and discharge processes and enables communication with other nodes in the system. The proposed system is a multi-microcomputer system. Changing requirements, software development and bug fixes require the ability to update system software of microcontrollers. In this paper, a specific boot concept is proposed to increase the testability of the system. First, the requirements for the software update process are analyzed. Subsequently, a boot concept using Controller Area Network (CAN) is introduced and its advantages and limitations are shown. Finally, the boot concept is evaluated and possible alternative boot concepts with optical data transmission via a polymer optical fiber (POF) or with dual CAN design are proposed.