Pfaffenhofen a. d. Roth, 30 August 2018. NewTec, a specialist in safety-relevant electronic systems, offers the NTBatteryManagementSystem (NTBMS), a comprehensive development platform for managing starter and auxiliary batteries. Developed together with chip manufacturer NXP, the solution enables battery manufacturers to provide ISO 26262 and ASIL C-compliant systems cost-effectively.
With the growing number of electronic systems in motor vehicles, the demands on their power supply are also increasing. The challenge: the reliable operation of starter and auxiliary batteries is safety-relevant, both in vehicles with combustion engines and in hybrid vehicles. Battery management systems therefore monitor the charging process, state of charge and temperature, as well as the power supplied by the batteries.
NTBMS includes functions for monitoring the battery cells, measuring battery current and battery temperature, passive cell balancing and a processing unit for reading out the state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH). Communication with other control units is possible via LIN and CAN interfaces. In the event of a rear-end collision, crash detection ensures that the batteries are electrically disconnected from the vehicle electrical system.
At the heart of the hardware are two microcontrollers, one with a Cortex M3 for the applications and the second with a Cortex M0 for monitoring the safety functions. The system basis chip monitors and regulates the power supply, and an integrated watchdog with its own shutdown path ensures a safe shutdown in the event of voltage problems.
NTBMS is based on NTSafeSOM, a generic microcontroller module from NewTec for safe software development in automotive engineering. As NTSafeSOM can easily be integrated into circuits and controllers, it can also be used for other safety-critical automotive applications besides battery management, such as sunroof controllers or ABS valves.