Tuscaloosa, Ala. – Dr Jaber Abu-Qahouq, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in The University of Alabama College of Engineering, and a graduate student are the authors of a paper recently published in a highly-ranked IEEE journal.
The paper, “An Online Battery Impedance Measurement Method Using DC-DC Power Converter Control,” will be in an upcoming issue of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and is already posted on its website.
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics encompasses the applications of electronics, controls and communications, instrumentation and computational intelligence for the enhancement of industrial and manufacturing systems and processes.
The paper shows for the first time how to measure battery impedance in real-time online without the need for complicated and expensive offline equipment by using a novel DC-DC power converter control method and algorithm. This allows evaluating more accurately the state of charge, SOC, and state of health, SOH, of battery cells which improve their utilization and provide early fault detection which could lead to catastrophic failures. This is important in many applications such as electric and hybrid vehicles, grid scale energy storage, airplane battery management systems and a variety of consumer electronics.
Wangxin Huang, studying for his doctorate under Abu Qahouq, is a co-author on the paper.