Battery voltage monitoring apparatus
AssigneeDenso Corporation
InventorTakumi SHIMIZU
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Each monitor IC in the apparatus obtains operation power from a block including cells that are the objects to be monitored. The monitor IC includes a consumption-current adjusting circuit that adjusts a consumption current used from the operation power to a target value. In each monitor IC, the consumption current is adjusted to have the target value by the consumption-current adjusting circuit, and thus the consumption currents of the monitor ICs can be equalized, even if a different number of cells are connected to each monitor IC. Accordingly, it is possible to prevent the variation in the consumption currents among the monitor ICs.
Claims10
A battery voltage monitoring apparatus, comprising:
- a plurality of battery cells connected in series to each other, the plurality of battery cells being grouped into a plurality of blocks of battery cells, the blocks including at least one block having an arbitrary number of battery cells which are different in number from remaining blocks of the battery cells;
- a plurality of monitor integrated circuits assigned to the plurality of battery cells, respectively, each of the plurality of monitor integrated circuits being connected parallel to the respective battery cells belonging to each of the blocks to monitor voltage of each battery cell;
- and
- a plurality of consumption-current adjusting circuits each included in each of the monitor integrated circuits, each of the consumption-current adjusting circuits obtaining power supplied from each of the blocks to adjust a consumption current of each of the monitor integrated circuits to a desired current value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.