Design and Implementation of a Fully-digital

Lithium-Ion Battery Charger

Yi-Hwa Liu* Jen-Hao Teng**
*Department ofElectrical Engineering, **Department ofElectrical Engineering,
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Taipei, Taiwan. jhteng@mail. isu. edu. tw
yhliu@,mail. ntust. edu. tw
Abstract-The rapid progress in developing computer and characteristics of batteries, it is difficult to determine an
communication systems promotes the design trend of portable optimal charging pattern. Often, advanced charging method
electronic apparatuses, which are light, thin, short, and small. such as multi-stage constant current charging algorithm or
These developments have also resulted in massive demand for pulse charging algorithms have been proposed to deal with
secondary batteries. The advantages of lithium-ion batteries this problem, these methods require a digital controller to
include no memory effect, high operation voltage, and high
energy density. Therefore, they are the most popular secondary implement the complex charging strategy Conventionally,
batteries for consumer electronics. microprocessor-based digital control scheme has been applied
to the charger system design. Microprocessor-based control
This paper presents the design and implementation of a schemes have the advantages of flexibility, higher reliability
FPGA-based lithium-ion battery charging system. To obtain the and lower cost. However, the demanding requirements of
optimal charging performance for the lithium-ion battery advanced charging algorithms imposed tremendous
charger, a multi-phase converter is used in the proposed system. computation load on the microprocessors. Therefore, FPGAs
Using this topology, the performance of the proposed system can are utilized because the high-speed hard-wired logic can
be raised. In addition to the hardware, a graphical user interface enhance the computation capability of the digital controllers.
is also proposed in this paper. Simulation and experimental
results validate the effectiveness of the proposed charging system. The FPGA-based digital controller has the advantages of
According to the experimental results, the proposed charger is elegant hardware, higher computation speed, and shorter time
capable of charging the lithium-ion batteries with less than 1 % for prototyping etc. In addition, the whole system may be
current ripple. implemented in only a single FPGA chip, consequently the
circuit is very compact [5, 6].
I. INTRODUCTION
The rapid progress in developing computer and In this paper, the design and implementation of a fully
communication systems promotes the design trend of portable digital FPGA-based lithium ion battery charger is presented.
electronic apparatuses, which are light, thin, short, and small. The proposed charging system consists of an FPGA-based
The secondary batteries then become the significant power controller, a data acquisition system and a programmable
source for the portable electronic apparatuses. For secondary power source. The FPGA-based controller is implemented
batteries, three chemistries are used extensively in today's with a FLEX1OK70 FPGA from Altera, and is digitally
portable telecommunication and consumer electronics devices: programmable. The data acquisition system is used to record
nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion (Li-ion). battery parameters during the charging or discharging process,
Among these, lithium-ion batteries are growing at a rapid rate these data can then be used to determine the effectiveness of
in response to environmental concerns and the need for higher the charging strategy. The programmable power source uses
energy density [ 1-4]. a multiphase buck converter topology; the benefits of this kind
of topology include lower output current ripple, higher di/dt
The performance and longevity of lithium ion batteries ramp rate and lower inductance values. In order to reach the
depend, to a large extent, on the quality of their chargers. The fully-digital design goal, the state-space representation of the
conventional charging procedure of lithium ion batteries programmable power source is first developed, digital
occurs in two steps, the battery is charged at a constant current proportional-integral-derivative control (PID-control)
until the battery voltage reaches the predefined upper voltage algorithm is then designed accordingly. The experimental
limit (4.1 or 4.2 V) followed by a constant voltage charging results show that the proposed charger is capable of charging
until the current reaches a predetermined small value. This the lithium-ion batteries with less than 1 % current ripple.
method is often called constant current-constant voltage
(CC-CV) charging method and is often adopted in This paper is organized as follows: section II describes
commercialized battery charging ICs. However, CC-CV is not the hardware configuration of the proposed charger system.
suitable for rapid charging since the constant voltage charging Section III describes the software part of the proposed system.
seriously extends the charging time and also reduces the cycle Section IV shows the architecture of the experimental setup
life of the battery. Due to the complex electrochemical and gives some testing results. Section V provides the

1-4244-0549-1/06/$20.00 (2006 IEEE.

conclusions. the battery terminal, current sinked/ sourced by the
II. THE HARDWARE CONFIGURATION battery during the charging/discharging process (this
current is measured through a hall effect sensor) and
Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the proposed charger battery temperature.
system. In Fig. 1, the FPGA chip is used to implement the Amplification, level adaption and filtering circuits for
digital control algorithm, provide the timing and execute the the analog signals from the different sensors.
gating of the needed switches in the power source and then 12 bits Analog to Digital Converters (ADS7842 from
gathers and analyzes data from the data acquisition circuit. Texas Instrument Corp).
Multiphase PWM modulation strategies and interfacing IC Analog to Digital Converters Interface. It controls the
driving signals are also realized using the FPGA chip to sampling of data.
achieve better performance. In this paper, VHDL (Very high Acquisition control system. It is the main controller of
speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language) is the whole data acquisition system.
utilized to design the digital controller of the proposed system. Communication interface. It controls the data
The proposed FPGA controller attempts to meet the flexibility, transmitting to/from the graphical user interface.
ease of use and low cost requirements for most consumers and
industrial applications.
USART
i

Fig. 1 Block diagram of the proposed charger _IJ

The whole system can be divided into three major parts: AXd fil
FPGA controller, data acquisition subsystem and
programmable power source subsystem. Detailed Fig. 2 Block diagram of the FPGA controller
descriptions about each subsystem will be given in the
followings: c. Programmable power source: The programmable
power source uses an interleaved multiphase buck converter
a. FPGA controller: The digital PID-control topology. Interleaving greatly reduces the current ripples to
algorithm is implemented in the FPGA controller. FPGA the output capacitors, which in turn reduces the steady-state
controller computes the gating signals of multiphase buck output voltage ripples, making it possible to use very small
converter according to the feedback battery voltage and inductances to improve transient responses. Interleaving
current information. In addition to implementing the main converters with small inductances reduces both the
battery charging controller, the FPGA also controls the steady-state voltage ripples and the transient voltage spikes, so
interfacing ICs and communicates with the graphical user that a much smaller output capacitance can be used to meet the
interface (GUI). In the proposed system, the main controller steady-state and transient voltage requirements. The power
is implemented using the FLEX1OK70 FPGA device. The density can be significantly improved. The relationship of
block diagram of the FPGA-based control unit is shown in Fig. the output current ripple and the phase number is given by:
2. In Fig. 2, the FPGA gathers and analyzes battery status
data (voltage and current) from the A/D conversion IC. After V,xTx(ID)
obtaining the required charging status (voltage and current), IM= (1)
i M 1
necessary gating signals are then determined through the AI =

built-in digital controller and signal interleaving circuits and i=T - M =2,3,4...
are outputted through PWM module implemented in the L
fl iD+I]
FPGA. In order to continuously monitor the charging
process, a universal synchronous asynchronous receiver
transmitter (USART) module is implemented in the main where VO, I, is the output voltage and current, M is the
controller. In addition, the operating status of the charger phase number, L is the inductance, D is the duty cycle and T is
will be displayed real-time on a 16x2 LCD display. Remote the switching period.
on/off control and charging/ discharging control is realized Fig. 3 shows a typical diagram of a four phase buck
through general purpose I/0 ports. converter and its gating signals used in this proposed system.
Generally speaking, A N-phase converter consists of N
b. Data acquisition subsystem: From Fig. 2, the data identical converters with interconnected inputs and outputs.
acquisition system consists of the following circuits: The duty cycles of adjacent channels have a phase shift of
| Sensors to measure the following variables: Voltage in 3600/N, where N is the total channel number.
 ____________

Fig. 3 A four phase buck converter and its gating signals

III. THE SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

In this section, the software configurations of the
proposed charging system will be provided. Fig. 4 shows the
software flowchart of the proposed FPGA controller. From
Fig. 4, the main tasks of the FPGA controller include:
c Provide the gating signals of multiphase buck
converter.
c Control the interfacing circuits including converter ICs
and general purpose I/Os.
c Perform the USART communication with GUI.
In order to implement the fully digital lithium ion
battery charging controller, the transfer function of the power
converter should first be derived. In this paper, the power
function can be obtained as:
T (s) V (s)
d(s)

.
state-space averaging technique, the small signal transfer

LCLS2L+K+

algorithm can then be designed as:

..

IUART
C

AID Conversion
IRead Parameter
L
I
1+ sCr,
RC)
+

Using a simple PID controller, the digital control

I
LC

UJ(n) =K.E,(n)+KJEL(n-l)+KLE(n -2)+KUJ(n-1)+KUJ(n -2)

where E(n) is the error signal and U(n) is the input signal.

lStart

Rleceive Daa
.

Fig. 4 Software flowchart of FPGA controller

In the proposed system, a graphical user interface is also
developed to offer a user-friendly operating/monitoring
interface. The flowchart of the above-mentioned GUI is
shown in Fig. 6. From Fig. 6, the main tasks of the GUI
software include:
c Provide current/voltage charging mode select.
c Perform the USART communication with FPGA
controller.
c Display charging/discharging parameters.
A
KV,

EndlA
X

rthtriLikg
Control

Mlultiiphase
Gaiiig Signali
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USART
TansmitmataI
..~
(2)

(3)

source used is a multi-phase buck converter. Fig. 5 shows

the circuit topology of a typical buck converter. Using the

1)A
A

(a) Circuit topolbg!

LrI
L
R?
+
dk 11
1(
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(c)switch off
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Fig. 5 Buck converter circuit topology
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Fig. 6 Graphical user interface flowchart
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In order to validate the proposed charging system,
experiments is carried out on commercially available
lithium ion batteries. Due to limited space, only selected
waveforms are displayed in this section. Fig. 7 shows the CM- 50.0mlv
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gating signals of a four phase buck converter. From Fig. 7, Fig. 8 Output current waveform of the proposed system
the gating signals are properly interleaved with 900
separation. Fig. 8 shows the measured output current Table 1: Ripple amount of CC mode
waveform of the proposed charger system.
One phase 0.625%
lo= 0.2A Io= 0.6A |I 1.2A Tl 2.OA
1.25% 1.5% 1.75%
Table 1 shows the ripple amount of different output Two phase 0.5% 0.625% 0.75% 1%
current commands. From table 1, the maximum ripple Four phase 0.25% 0.375% 0.5% 0.625%
current in constant current mode is less than l1% for a four Table 2: Transient response time and voltage deviation
phase converter. Table 2 shows the voltage deviation and voltage deviation response time
response time of the proposed charger. One phase 125 mV 600 us
Two phase 150 mV 400 us
V. DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS Four phase 260 mV 380
In this paper, a fully digital FPGA-based lithium ion
battery charger was presented. The design and VII. REFERENCES
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VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS [6] Jung; S. L., Chang, M. Y., Jyang, J. Y., Yeh, L. C., Tzou, Y. Y.,
This work was sponsored by National Science Council, " Design and implementation of an FPGA-based control IC for
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