56-Level programmable voltage detector in steps of 50mV for battery management

A programmable voltage detector (PVD) for the battery management is developed for the first time. In battery management applications, PVD's with fine voltage resolution (<±1% of battery voltage) are required to precisely control the charging and discharging of the battery and to provide a universal voltage detector. The proposed fine voltage-step subtraction (FVS) method in PVD enables the wide detection voltage (Vdetect) range from 1.88 V to 4.67 V, fine Vdetect resolution of 50mV, and the 56-level linear programmability. Compared with previous publications, the 50-mV resolution is the smallest and the 56-level programmability is the largest. The programmability of Vdetect enables a Vdetect hopping capability achieving time-varying Vdetect to reduce the number of voltage detectors in the battery management system. PVD fabricated in 5V, 250-nm CMOS process shows the measured power consumption of 13nW at 3.5V and the temperature coefficient of 0.17mV/°C in −20°C to 80°C.