Battery Management Sleepwalking Mode for Safety Monitoring

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Solution Overview

Problem

Modern portable devices with Li-ion battery packs face safety challenges due to potential overheating, explosion, or fire risks from improper charging or discharging, and existing systems rely heavily on firmware for safety-critical functions, which can be unreliable and power-intensive.

Innovation Solution

A battery management and protection system with integrated autonomous safety features, including automatic parameter loading, a centralized timekeeper, event system for inter-module communication, and enhanced diagnostic capabilities, allowing for independent operation of safety functions and reduced firmware reliance, even in low-power modes.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If firmware is used for safety-critical functions, then safety monitoring can be implemented, but reliability decreases and power consumption increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesafety monitoring reliabilityVSAvoidpower consumption

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system divides safety monitoring functions into two segments: critical safety functions executed by hardware circuits independently of firmware, and non-critical functions handled by firmware. This segmentation ensures that safety-critical operations remain reliable and always active, while reducing overall power consumption by minimizing firmware involvement in safety monitoring.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The protection circuitry is designed to autonomously monitor battery conditions and trigger protective actions without requiring firmware intervention. The hardware self-services by continuously checking voltage, current, and temperature parameters and automatically responding to unsafe conditions, thereby eliminating the need for power-intensive firmware polling and improving both reliability and energy efficiency.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

2Reliability

If firmware is used for safety-critical functions, then safety monitoring can be implemented, but device complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesafety monitoring reliabilityVSAvoidsystem complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts safety-critical monitoring functions from the firmware layer and implements them in dedicated hardware circuits. This extraction simplifies the overall system architecture by removing complex software dependencies from safety functions, making the system more reliable and easier to verify while reducing firmware complexity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The system replaces software-based (firmware) safety monitoring with hardware-based monitoring circuits. This substitution eliminates the complexity of software execution, interpretation, and state management, providing deterministic and reliable safety functions through dedicated electronic circuits that operate independently of the main processor.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #28Mechanics substitution (Replace mechanical system)

3Use of energy by moving object

If the system enters sleep mode to reduce power consumption, then energy efficiency improves, but safety monitoring capability deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvepower consumptionVSAvoidsafety monitoring capability

Core Design Contradiction:

Use of energy by moving objectVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system applies different operational states to different components: the main processor enters sleep mode to conserve power, while the protection circuitry remains fully active to maintain safety monitoring. This local differentiation allows the system to achieve low power consumption during normal operation while ensuring continuous safety monitoring capability through dedicated hardware that operates independently of the processor's power state.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

Data Source

PatentUS8943335B2Battery management and protection system using a module in a sleepwalking mode to monitor operational characteristics of a battery

Publication Date: 2015.01.27 ATMEL CORP

AI summary

A battery management and protection system can include various features to improve safety-critical and other functions. Among the features that can be included in some implementations are automatic loading of safety or other parameters during start-up of the system; a centralized timekeeper and an event system that can trigger actions in the system independently of a central processing unit; use of the same modules for both automatically-controlled safety-related measurements and firmware-controlled measurements; enhanced diagnostic features, and a sleepwalking feature that allows certain modules in the system to continue to perform various functions even when the module or the system is in a low-power sleep mode.