A Li-ion battery charge protocol with optimal aging-quality of service trade-off

The reduction of usable capacity of rechargeable batteries can be mitigated during the charge process by acting on some stress factors, namely, the average state-of-charge (SOC) and the charge current. Larger values of these quantities cause an increased degradation of battery capacity, so it would be desirable to keep both as low as possible, which is obviously in contrast with the objective of a fast charge. However, by exploiting the fact that in most battery-powered systems the time during which it is plugged for charging largely exceeds the time required to charge, it is possible to devise appropriate charge protocols that achieve a good balance between fast charge and aging. In this paper we propose a charge protocol that, using an accurate estimate of the charging time of a battery and the statistical properties of the charge/discharge patterns, yields an optimal trade-off between aging and quality of service. The latter is measured in terms of the distance of the actual SOC from 100% at the end of the charge phase. Results show that the present method improves significantly over other similar protocols proposed in the literature.