Patent ID: 8417472

Claim:
A battery management system for energy efficient management of a rechargeable multi-cell battery pack, comprising: a plurality of local monitors coupled to a plurality of battery cells and operable for sampling status information for said battery cells; a plurality of upper controllers coupled to said local monitors and operable for estimating a state of at least one battery cell of said battery cells according to the status information for said at least one battery cell; and a central controller coupled to said upper controllers and operable for broadcasting a sample command to at least one upper controller of said upper controllers, wherein said at least one upper controller receives said sample command from said central controller and broadcasts said sample command to corresponding local monitors of said local monitors, and wherein said corresponding local monitors synchronously start a sample period for said sampling in response to said sample command, sample the status information for corresponding battery cells of said battery cells during said sample period, and synchronously stop said sample period.