Robustness comparison of battery state of charge observers for automotive applications

This paper compares the robustness of three different battery State of Charge (SoC) estimation algorithms: the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) and the H-infinity filter. Their performance when subject to disturbances such as parameter uncertainties, different sensor noise characteristics and sensitivity to tuning of the filter are examined. Simulations show that the appropriate choice of observer algorithm will depend on battery chemistry as well as on the intended application. For batteries with a strong correlation between SoC and OCV, the UKF is robust to disturbances such as sensor bias. The H-infinity observer shows performance on par with the UKF but the variability of the estimation errors are larger. The EKF is a good all-round choice