Renesas unveils multi-cell battery front end family

Renesas Electronics has introduced a new family of multi-cell full battery front end (BFE) ICs for battery management systems (BMS).

These management systems are intended for larger, high-voltage battery packs that power e-scooters, energy storage, high-voltage power tools, and other high-voltage equipment.

The ICs have been designed to provide fast, flexible, cell balancing up to 200 mA+, a critical function to enable fast recharging and high utilisation in large battery packs with hot plug tolerance up to 62V.

“BMS serves as the “brains” of the battery pack, and the increasing adoption of BMS in UPS and the data centre is spiking demand for high-performance ICs that can support higher voltage and larger cell battery pack sizes,” said Andrew Cowell, Vice President, Mobility, Infrastructure and IoT Power Business Division at Renesas. “BFEs are a critical part of BMS, and we’ve built our new RAA489206 and RAA489204 ICs with the performance, flexibility, and integration that make it easier for customers to simplify the design process and create robust, cost-effective battery systems for the growing mobility, UPS backup, energy storage markets.”

Designed for higher voltage mobility applications where larger cell count and temperature variance across cells are more likely to lead to cell-to-cell imbalances, the RAA489206 provides full high-side battery protection and monitoring for 4S to 16S cell battery packs.

The RAA489204 provides improved daisy chain operation with accelerated device-to-device communication and enhanced diagnostics compared with previous-generation devices, as well as internal cell balancing options and support for the higher voltages and cell count required by UPS systems, grid backup, and other energy storage systems.

The new ICs’ high integration is intended to help simplify the design cycle and reduces customers’ system BOM costs significantly, accelerating design and BOM selection time from months to weeks. The ICs also feature extensive built-in self diagnostics, improving their safety functionality, reducing firmware workload, and easing the design burden for meeting safety standards. Pin-to-pin compatibility with Renesas’ previous BFE devices simplifies the design cycle even further, offering customers a quick and seamless migration path to the new BFE ICs.