WO2004111669A1 - Portable electronic device - Google Patents

Portable electronic device Download PDF

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Publication number
WO2004111669A1
WO2004111669A1 PCT/EP2003/012254 EP0312254W WO2004111669A1 WO 2004111669 A1 WO2004111669 A1 WO 2004111669A1 EP 0312254 W EP0312254 W EP 0312254W WO 2004111669 A1 WO2004111669 A1 WO 2004111669A1
Authority
WO
WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
portable electronic
electronic device
battery
processor unit
battery pack
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/EP2003/012254
Other languages
French (fr)
Inventor
Henrik Leegaard
Original Assignee
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Siemens Aktiengesellschaft filed Critical Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
Publication of WO2004111669A1 publication Critical patent/WO2004111669A1/en

Links

Classifications

    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
    • H01M—PROCESSES OR MEANS, e.g. BATTERIES, FOR THE DIRECT CONVERSION OF CHEMICAL ENERGY INTO ELECTRICAL ENERGY
    • H01M10/00—Secondary cells; Manufacture thereof
    • H01M10/42—Methods or arrangements for servicing or maintenance of secondary cells or secondary half-cells
    • H01M10/425—Structural combination with electronic components, e.g. electronic circuits integrated to the outside of the casing
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
    • H01M—PROCESSES OR MEANS, e.g. BATTERIES, FOR THE DIRECT CONVERSION OF CHEMICAL ENERGY INTO ELECTRICAL ENERGY
    • H01M10/00—Secondary cells; Manufacture thereof
    • H01M10/42—Methods or arrangements for servicing or maintenance of secondary cells or secondary half-cells
    • H01M10/4207—Methods or arrangements for servicing or maintenance of secondary cells or secondary half-cells for several batteries or cells simultaneously or sequentially
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
    • H01M—PROCESSES OR MEANS, e.g. BATTERIES, FOR THE DIRECT CONVERSION OF CHEMICAL ENERGY INTO ELECTRICAL ENERGY
    • H01M10/00—Secondary cells; Manufacture thereof
    • H01M10/42—Methods or arrangements for servicing or maintenance of secondary cells or secondary half-cells
    • H01M10/48—Accumulators combined with arrangements for measuring, testing or indicating the condition of cells, e.g. the level or density of the electrolyte
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H02—GENERATION; CONVERSION OR DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRIC POWER
    • H02J—CIRCUIT ARRANGEMENTS OR SYSTEMS FOR SUPPLYING OR DISTRIBUTING ELECTRIC POWER; SYSTEMS FOR STORING ELECTRIC ENERGY
    • H02J7/00—Circuit arrangements for charging or depolarising batteries or for supplying loads from batteries
    • H02J7/0063—Circuit arrangements for charging or depolarising batteries or for supplying loads from batteries with circuits adapted for supplying loads from the battery
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H02—GENERATION; CONVERSION OR DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRIC POWER
    • H02J—CIRCUIT ARRANGEMENTS OR SYSTEMS FOR SUPPLYING OR DISTRIBUTING ELECTRIC POWER; SYSTEMS FOR STORING ELECTRIC ENERGY
    • H02J7/00—Circuit arrangements for charging or depolarising batteries or for supplying loads from batteries
    • H02J7/007—Regulation of charging or discharging current or voltage
    • H02J7/00712—Regulation of charging or discharging current or voltage the cycle being controlled or terminated in response to electric parameters
    • Y—GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS
    • Y02—TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
    • Y02E—REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GAS [GHG] EMISSIONS, RELATED TO ENERGY GENERATION, TRANSMISSION OR DISTRIBUTION
    • Y02E60/00—Enabling technologies; Technologies with a potential or indirect contribution to GHG emissions mitigation
    • Y02E60/10—Energy storage using batteries

Definitions

  • Modern portable electronic devices can have very advanced charge control functions. Because of the portable nature of the devices, the operation current of such a device is mostly coming from a battery pack.
  • the battery pack in addition to the battery cells, also comprises a battery monitor.
  • State-of-the-art battery monitors such as Texas Instruments BQ26200, include Coulomb counters and flash memory. They can ⁇ be multifunctional monitoring devices, providing state-of- charge, temperature, and offset information. Some devices have multifunctional digital input/output ports, and are able to communicate the states of different registers in the RAM memory to an external device.
  • the external device is a processor unit which, for example, is in charge of charging control.
  • the processor unit operating voltages are being reduced to the voltage range of 1.5 to 2.9 Volt.
  • the battery monitor receives its operational power from the battery cells. For a widely used Lithium-ION battery, this corresponds to a voltage of 3.0 to 5.5 Volt. Thus it has turned out to be problematic to connect the battery monitor to a standard low-voltage Input/Output IO bus of a processor unit.
  • the present invention seeks to solve this problem by providing a device and a method for connecting a battery pack to a portable electronic device, by using the voltage level of the battery monitor adapted to the processor unit of the portable electronic device in a manner not prejudicial to the operation of the battery monitor.
  • the objective of the invention can be achieved by using a device or method according to independent patent claims 1 or 5, respectively.
  • a further objective of the invention is to provide a portable electronic device as defined in claim 4, wherein the battery monitor can still be used even though the battery internal voltage differs from the voltage used in the processor unit bus .
  • a further advantage of the present invention is that dissipation in the voltage adapting can be minimized.
  • Figure 1 shows a portable electronic device comprising a battery pack and a battery monitor therein;
  • Figure 2 shows a first embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention.
  • FIG 3 shows a second, preferred, embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention.
  • Figure 1 shows some functional blocks of a portable electronic device 10.
  • a typical example of such a portable electronic device 10 can be a portable CD or MP3 player, a mobile handset, a laptop computer, a PDA, a digital camera, or a handheld computer.
  • a rechargeable battery 12 which includes a Lithium-Ion battery cell 101. It is also possible to implement the battery cell 101 by using some other material, such as an alloy of Nickel-Cadmium.
  • the electrical circuits of the portable electronic device 10 get their operating current from the battery cell 101, usually through connectors identified in Figure 1 by + and - signs.
  • the state of the battery cell 101 is monitored by a battery monitor 102.
  • the battery monitor 102 is usually an ASIC circuit, and it gets its operating current directly from the battery cell 101 or from the leads between the battery cell 101 and the + and - connectors.
  • Texas Instruments model BQ26200 is an advanced battery monitor, and the data sheets relating thereto provide detailed information on the functions and different registers of the battery monitor.
  • One of the key functions of the battery monitor 102 is the "fuel gauge" function, i.e. the battery monitor 102 monitors the charge state of the battery cell 101 and communicates this to the processor unit 107 via the IO bus BUS.
  • a device 19 for connecting a battery pack 12 to a portable electronic device 10 is integrated into the portable electronic device 10.
  • the device 19 includes the + and - connectors for providing operating current to the portable electronic device 10, and a data connector 105 for connecting the battery monitor 102 in the battery pack 12 to the processor unit 107 in the portable electronic device 10.
  • the data connector 105 further comprises adapting means 151 for adapting the voltage level of the battery pack 12 to the voltage level of the processor unit 107 of the portable electronic device 10.
  • the communication to and from the battery monitor 102 in a battery package 12 is implemented as a bus interface.
  • a bi-directional level shifter 105 is implemented, because the general purpose I/O port BUS and the data interface of the battery monitor 102 have different voltage domains.
  • the data transfer between the processor 107 and the battery monitor 102 includes the tasks of reading from and writing to registers inside the battery monitor 102.
  • the battery monitor 102 contains memory where battery model data for the actual battery is stored. Furthermore, there are some different counters and registers for sensing the capacity of the battery cell 101 and its temperature.
  • the receive and send wires can be combined to one wire before or after level shifting in order to limit the number of pins in the battery pack 12.
  • Figure 2 shows the first embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention.
  • a further advantage of this embodiment invention is that a two to one -wire bus interface can be made very simple and to a cost effective solution.
  • the RX and TX pins from the UART are connected to one wire with two transistors Tl and T2.
  • the output of the battery monitor 102 in the battery pack 12 is an open drain.
  • the TX port is set as high (1) having a voltage level from 1.5 to 2.9 Volt.
  • the DATA line is also pulled high (1) with the resistor R3, having a voltage level of 3.0 to 5.5 V.
  • the TX port When transmitting data from the processor unit 107 to the battery pack 12, the TX port is set low (0) or high (1) acccording to the data to be transmitted.
  • the TX port level is set to 0 V and the transistor Tl is conducting, because of the base resistor R2 and thus pulling the DATA line to low (0) .
  • the TXD port level is set to 1.5 to 2.9 Volt (1) and the transistor Tl does not conduct due to the base resistor R2, thus pulling the DATA line up to 3.0 to 5.5 Volt (1) with the resistor R3.
  • the battery monitor 102 When transmitting data from the battery pack 12 to the processor unit 102, the battery monitor 102 sets the DATA line low (0) or high (0) depending on data which is to be transmitted.
  • the DATA line level In case of a low, i.e. a zero bit, the the DATA line level is set to OV and the transistor T2 conducts due to the base resistor R2 and thu pulls the RX port to low (0) . In case of a high, i.e. a true bit, the DATA line level is set to 3.0 to 5.5 Volt (1) and the transistor T2 does not conduct beause the base resistor R2 and the RX is pulled up to 1.5 to 2.9 Volt (1) with resistor Rl.
  • Figure 3 shows the preferred embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention.
  • a further advantage of this embodiment invention is that a two to one -wire bus interface can be made simply and in a cost effective manner.
  • the second embodiment in Figure 3 differs from the device shown in Figure 2 in that the leads from the emitter of transistor Tl and from the collector of transistor T2 are joined to enable communications to/from the bi-directional bus interface.

Landscapes

  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Manufacturing & Machinery (AREA)
  • Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
  • Chemical Kinetics & Catalysis (AREA)
  • Electrochemistry (AREA)
  • General Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
  • Power Engineering (AREA)
  • Microelectronics & Electronic Packaging (AREA)
  • Power Sources (AREA)
  • Secondary Cells (AREA)

Abstract

A device (19) for connecting a battery pack (12) to a portable electronic device (10) comprises a first and a second connector (+, -) for providing operating current to the portable electronic device (10); and a data connector (105) for connecting a battery monitor (102) in the battery pack (12) to a processor unit (107) in the portable electronic device (10). The data connector (105) further comprises an adapting means (151) for adapting a voltage level of the battery pack (12) to a voltage level of the processor unit (107) of the portable electronic device (10).

Description

PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE
Modern portable electronic devices, especially mobile phones, can have very advanced charge control functions. Because of the portable nature of the devices, the operation current of such a device is mostly coming from a battery pack. For some models, the battery pack, in addition to the battery cells, also comprises a battery monitor.
State-of-the-art battery monitors, such as Texas Instruments BQ26200, include Coulomb counters and flash memory. They can ■ be multifunctional monitoring devices, providing state-of- charge, temperature, and offset information. Some devices have multifunctional digital input/output ports, and are able to communicate the states of different registers in the RAM memory to an external device. Typically, the external device is a processor unit which, for example, is in charge of charging control.
Due to recent developments in the art of microchip design, the processor unit operating voltages are being reduced to the voltage range of 1.5 to 2.9 Volt. However, the battery monitor receives its operational power from the battery cells. For a widely used Lithium-ION battery, this corresponds to a voltage of 3.0 to 5.5 Volt. Thus it has turned out to be problematic to connect the battery monitor to a standard low-voltage Input/Output IO bus of a processor unit.
In one aspect the present invention seeks to solve this problem by providing a device and a method for connecting a battery pack to a portable electronic device, by using the voltage level of the battery monitor adapted to the processor unit of the portable electronic device in a manner not prejudicial to the operation of the battery monitor. The objective of the invention can be achieved by using a device or method according to independent patent claims 1 or 5, respectively.
A further objective of the invention is to provide a portable electronic device as defined in claim 4, wherein the battery monitor can still be used even though the battery internal voltage differs from the voltage used in the processor unit bus .
The dependent claims describe preferred embodiments of the present invention.
A further advantage of the present invention is that dissipation in the voltage adapting can be minimized.
In the following, the invention will be described in more detail with reference to examples shown in the accompanying drawings 1 to 3, of which:
Figure 1 shows a portable electronic device comprising a battery pack and a battery monitor therein;
Figure 2 shows a first embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention; and
Figure 3 shows a second, preferred, embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention. Figure 1 shows some functional blocks of a portable electronic device 10. A typical example of such a portable electronic device 10 can be a portable CD or MP3 player, a mobile handset, a laptop computer, a PDA, a digital camera, or a handheld computer. Inside the portable electronic device 10 there is a rechargeable battery 12 which includes a Lithium-Ion battery cell 101. It is also possible to implement the battery cell 101 by using some other material, such as an alloy of Nickel-Cadmium. The electrical circuits of the portable electronic device 10 get their operating current from the battery cell 101, usually through connectors identified in Figure 1 by + and - signs.
The state of the battery cell 101 is monitored by a battery monitor 102. The battery monitor 102 is usually an ASIC circuit, and it gets its operating current directly from the battery cell 101 or from the leads between the battery cell 101 and the + and - connectors. Texas Instruments model BQ26200 is an advanced battery monitor, and the data sheets relating thereto provide detailed information on the functions and different registers of the battery monitor. One of the key functions of the battery monitor 102 is the "fuel gauge" function, i.e. the battery monitor 102 monitors the charge state of the battery cell 101 and communicates this to the processor unit 107 via the IO bus BUS.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a device 19 for connecting a battery pack 12 to a portable electronic device 10 is integrated into the portable electronic device 10. The device 19 includes the + and - connectors for providing operating current to the portable electronic device 10, and a data connector 105 for connecting the battery monitor 102 in the battery pack 12 to the processor unit 107 in the portable electronic device 10. The data connector 105 further comprises adapting means 151 for adapting the voltage level of the battery pack 12 to the voltage level of the processor unit 107 of the portable electronic device 10.
The communication to and from the battery monitor 102 in a battery package 12 is implemented as a bus interface. In order to use a general purpose I/O port to communicate with a battery monitor 102, a bi-directional level shifter 105 is implemented, because the general purpose I/O port BUS and the data interface of the battery monitor 102 have different voltage domains.
The data transfer between the processor 107 and the battery monitor 102 includes the tasks of reading from and writing to registers inside the battery monitor 102. The battery monitor 102 contains memory where battery model data for the actual battery is stored. Furthermore, there are some different counters and registers for sensing the capacity of the battery cell 101 and its temperature.
The point of having a RX and TX port for the communication is that in this way a standard Universal Asynchronous Receiver- Transmitter UART can be used to make the necessary protocol for communication to/from the battery monitor 102.
The receive and send wires can be combined to one wire before or after level shifting in order to limit the number of pins in the battery pack 12.
Figure 2 shows the first embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention. A further advantage of this embodiment invention is that a two to one -wire bus interface can be made very simple and to a cost effective solution.
The RX and TX pins from the UART are connected to one wire with two transistors Tl and T2. The output of the battery monitor 102 in the battery pack 12 is an open drain.
In idle and RX the TX port is set as high (1) having a voltage level from 1.5 to 2.9 Volt. In this case the DATA line is also pulled high (1) with the resistor R3, having a voltage level of 3.0 to 5.5 V.
When transmitting data from the processor unit 107 to the battery pack 12, the TX port is set low (0) or high (1) acccording to the data to be transmitted.
In case of a low, i.e. a zero bit, the TX port level is set to 0 V and the transistor Tl is conducting, because of the base resistor R2 and thus pulling the DATA line to low (0) .
In case of a high, i.e. a true bit, the TXD port level is set to 1.5 to 2.9 Volt (1) and the transistor Tl does not conduct due to the base resistor R2, thus pulling the DATA line up to 3.0 to 5.5 Volt (1) with the resistor R3.
When transmitting data from the battery pack 12 to the processor unit 102, the battery monitor 102 sets the DATA line low (0) or high (0) depending on data which is to be transmitted.
In case of a low, i.e. a zero bit, the the DATA line level is set to OV and the transistor T2 conducts due to the base resistor R2 and thu pulls the RX port to low (0) . In case of a high, i.e. a true bit, the DATA line level is set to 3.0 to 5.5 Volt (1) and the transistor T2 does not conduct beause the base resistor R2 and the RX is pulled up to 1.5 to 2.9 Volt (1) with resistor Rl.
Figure 3 shows the preferred embodiment of the device used for carrying out the invention. A further advantage of this embodiment invention is that a two to one -wire bus interface can be made simply and in a cost effective manner.
The second embodiment in Figure 3 differs from the device shown in Figure 2 in that the leads from the emitter of transistor Tl and from the collector of transistor T2 are joined to enable communications to/from the bi-directional bus interface.
Although the invention has been described above with reference to the examples shown in the appended drawings, it is obvious that the invention is not limited to these but may be modified by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention. The voltage domains mentioned in the description are only examples, whereas in practice other two different voltage domains can be employed.

Claims

Claims :
l.A device (19) for connecting a battery pack (12) to a portable electronic device (10), comprising: - a first and a second connector (+, -) for providing operating current to the portable electronic device (10); and
- a data connector (105) for connecting a battery monitor (102) in the battery pack (12) to a processor unit (107) in the portable electronic device (10) ; characterized in that: said data connector (105) further comprises an adapting means (151) for adapting a voltage level of the battery pack (12) to a voltage level of the processor unit (107) of the portable electronic device (10) .
2.A device according to claim 1, wherein: said adapting means (151) further comprises: first means (T2) for adapting a signal from the battery monitor (102) to the processor unit (107); and ii) second means (Tl) for adapting a signal from the processor unit (107) to the battery monitor (102) .
3.A device according to claim 1, wherein: said first means (T2) comprises a first transistor and said second means (Tl) comprises a second transistor.
4.A portable electronic device (10), comprising: a processor unit (107); a battery pack (12) further comprising a battery monitor (102) ; and a device (19) according to any one of claims 1 to 3 for connecting the battery pack (12) to the portable electronic device (10) .
5. A method for providing a data connection between a battery monitor (102) in a battery pack (12) and a processor unit
(107) in a portable electronic device (10), comprising the step of: adapting a voltage level of the battery pack (12) to a voltage level of the processor unit (107) of the portable electronic device (10).
6. A method of claim 5, wherein: said adapting step is performed using one or two transistors (Tl, T2) .
PCT/EP2003/012254 2003-06-16 2003-11-03 Portable electronic device WO2004111669A1 (en)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
GB0313888.0 2003-06-16
GB0313888A GB2388976B (en) 2003-06-16 2003-06-16 Device and method for connecting a battery pack to a portable electronic device, and portable electronic device

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
WO2004111669A1 true WO2004111669A1 (en) 2004-12-23

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Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
PCT/EP2003/012254 WO2004111669A1 (en) 2003-06-16 2003-11-03 Portable electronic device

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Country Link
GB (1) GB2388976B (en)
WO (1) WO2004111669A1 (en)

Citations (2)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US5983137A (en) * 1997-08-19 1999-11-09 Physio-Control Manufacturing Corporation Method and system for monitoring the condition of a battery pack in a defibrillator
GB2368495A (en) * 2000-10-23 2002-05-01 Ericsson Telefon Ab L M Monitoring circuit for a battery used in a mobile phone

Family Cites Families (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
GB8306071D0 (en) * 1983-03-04 1983-04-07 Electronic Designs Iw Ltd Battery charging

Patent Citations (2)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US5983137A (en) * 1997-08-19 1999-11-09 Physio-Control Manufacturing Corporation Method and system for monitoring the condition of a battery pack in a defibrillator
GB2368495A (en) * 2000-10-23 2002-05-01 Ericsson Telefon Ab L M Monitoring circuit for a battery used in a mobile phone

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
GB0313888D0 (en) 2003-07-23
GB2388976B (en) 2005-12-14
GB2388976A (en) 2003-11-26

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