1. Introduction
With air pollution, global warming, and the energy crisis becoming important and pressing issues, electric vehicles (EVs) have been drawing increasing attention [
1]. Lithium-ion batteries, with their advantages of high energy density, long lifespan, and low cost, are widely used as a power source for EVs [
2]. To ensure the safe and efficient use of lithium-ion batteries, battery management systems (BMSs) monitor the state variables of the batteries [
3]. These state variables include temperature, state of health (SOH) and state of power (SOP). Among the monitored states, state of charge (SOC) is particularly important. SOC is defined as the ratio of the remaining capacity to the maximum capacity of the battery. Accurate SOC measurement enables the prevention of overcharging and overdischarging of the battery, as well as the prediction of the driving range, so SOC is necessary for battery control [
4]. However, SOC cannot be measured directly and must be estimated using observable values such as battery current and voltage.
In previous studies, various methods for estimating the SOC of batteries have been proposed [
5,
6], which can be classified into model-free and model-based approaches. The Coulomb counting method, categorized as a model-free approach, is the simplest method with low computational cost. However, due to its lack of a feedback structure, errors from the battery current sensor and initial SOC estimation continue to accumulate. The open-circuit voltage (OCV) method estimates SOC from measured OCV values using the OCV-SOC relationship. This method is effective when accurate OCV values can be obtained. However, it has been reported that stabilizing the OCV in lithium-ion batteries requires prolonged rest periods, and the OCV-SOC relationship varies with temperature and degradation [
7,
8,
9]. In data-driven SOC estimation methods, neural networks [
10] are often employed. However, these methods require large amounts of data and the estimation accuracy depends on the training dataset. Additionally, low extrapolation capability has been pointed out [
11].
Model-based methods, on the other hand, combine a model describing battery behavior with an observer to estimate SOC. Compared to model-free methods, they offer advantages such as higher reliability and better control performance. There are two primary types of battery models: electrochemical models and equivalent circuit models (ECMs). Electrochemical models are based on diffusion phenomena inside the battery and can accurately replicate battery responses, but their high computational burden is a challenge [
12]. ECMs, on the other hand, consist of basic circuit elements and are simpler, which makes them widely used in research. It is common to combine ECMs with Kalman Filters (KFs) for SOC estimation. For instance, Ref. [
13] linearizes the model and uses a KF for SOC estimation. For models with nonlinearities, Ref. [
14] uses an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), while Ref. [
15] uses the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) for SOC estimation.
It has been reported that the characteristics of batteries fluctuate due to degradation and other factors [
16]. Against this background, many methods have incorporated adaptability into filtering algorithms. For example, Ref. [
17] simultaneously performs SOC estimation and parameter adjustment of the equivalent circuit model using the Unscented Kalman Filter.
In recent years, there have been numerous reports on using fractional calculus-based models for batteries. Ref. [
18] plots the frequency response of the battery impedance on the complex plane and shows that constant phase elements with fractional order are needed to reproduce its characteristic shape. Ref. [
19] utilizes a fractional-order adaptive observer to estimate the internal state of batteries. Ref. [
20] performs SOC estimation using a fractional-order EKF, achieving improved estimation accuracy compared to integer-order EKF. Ref. [
17] conducts SOC estimation using fractional-order EKF and parameter adjustment using fractional-order UKF. However, KF-based methods require the prior knowledge of noise variance as a design parameter, which is a trial-and-error process. Therefore, in practical use, the design parameters need to be adjusted each time the magnitude of the noise changes. In the case of a Luenberger-type observer, if estimation has been performed on data containing a certain amount of noise, the estimation accuracy tends to improve with the data containing a smaller amount of noise without changing the design parameters. In contrast, the KF-based method may lose estimation accuracy in similar situations. In EVs, where a variety of operating environments are expected, it is difficult to know the characteristics of the noise, and this is an issue with the KF-based estimation method.
The contributions of this study are as follows. First, a fractional-order model is used as the battery model, which can accurately reproduce the battery’s response. Second, SOC estimation is conducted by a fractional-order Kreisselmeier-type adaptive observer that is adaptive to deal with variations in battery characteristics. This has advantages over KF-based methods in that it does not require a priori noise information and does not require changes in design parameters when noise characteristics change. For the method of constructing the observer, refer to [
19].
The rest of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the fundamentals of fractional calculus and a simulation method.
Section 3 describes a battery model and a parameter identification result. A fractional-order Kreisselmeier-type adaptive observer and a proposed adaptive law are described in
Section 4. The numerical simulation results of the proposed method under the US06 and FUDS tests are discussed in
Section 5. Finally,
Section 6 concludes this article.
4. Observer
The Kreisselmeier-type observer is an adaptive observer proposed by Kreisselmeier [
25]. The fractional-order Kreisselmeier-type adaptive observer, which extends this to fractional orders, is described in this section with reference to [
19].
4.1. Fractional-Order Kreisselmeier-Type Adaptive Observer
The following single-input, single-output fractional-order plant is the observed object.
where
are the plant input and output, respectively, and
are the unknown parameters.
Now, the following assumptions are made for this fractional-order plant.
Under these assumptions, we construct a fractional-order adaptive observer that estimates the state and identifies the unknown parameters online from the input–output signals .
The state equation in Equation (
27) can be rewritten as follows:
where
Suppose
are given by the following formula.
In this case, Equations (28) and (
32) can be rewritten as follows:
Furthermore, the following equations hold for
.
Moreover,
can also be expressed as follows.
When Equations (
39) and (
40) are used to obtain
, it is necessary to calculate the fractional calculus for each
element. On the other hand, if we use Equations (
47) and (48), the number of calculations of fractional calculus can be reduced to
n times, which is required to obtain
.
Using these expressions, Equations (
43) and (
44) can be expressed as follows:
The state estimate
and output estimate
are designed using the initial estimate
and parameter estimate
as follows:
where
denote the estimated value of
at each time.
The error
between the plant output
and its estimated value
can be expressed as follows:
where
represents the effect of the initial error. By choosing the matrix
to satisfy the stability condition of the fractional-order system,
can be converged as
. Therefore, the output error equation becomes as follows:
By properly constructing the parameter adjustment law, the output error can be asymptotically reduced to 0.
The adaptive law should be designed to vary the parameters in the direction of decreasing
, the square of the output error. The gradient of
with respect to
is obtained by the following equation.
From this result, the following adaptive law is obtained as follows:
Stability can be proved by giving the Lyapunov function as follows:
The derivative of the Lyapunov function is as follows:
Therefore, we can set as . If the signal input to the parameter adjustment part satisfies the persistent excitation (PE), we can set as .
With the above flow, a fractional-order Kreisselmeier-type adaptive observer can be constructed from the plant’s input and output .
4.2. Battery Model Transformation
Battery characteristics may change as the battery degrades or the temperature changes. The battery dataset includes a time series of surface temperatures, but they change only about 2 degrees within a cycle. The degradation effect has a long time scale. Therefore, we assume that the circuit elements
in the battery model are time invariant and unknown. We consider using an adaptive observer to simultaneously perform identification and state estimation. To apply the adaptive observer, the plant must be converted to an observable canonical form. In this subsection, we show the process of converting the equation Equations (
19)–(21).
Although
in Equation (21) is a nonlinear function, it shows approximately linear behavior in the range of
. Therefore, in this study, the range of
is first-order approximated as follows:
By the least-squares method, the coefficients are set to
. The result of the first-order approximation is shown in the following
Figure 8.
From the above, Equation (21) can be rewritten as follows, where
is newly defined as the output after transposing the direct and constant terms from the right side.
Furthermore, the system is converted to an observable canonical form.
where
The Kreisselmeier-type adaptive observer can estimate the first column of and all entries of , at most six entries. In this study, we adjust three of these six entries: the entry of and the first and third entries of , which contains the unknown parameters .
4.3. Proposed Adaptive Law
The battery model is a system with two unknown parameters
. However, the adaptive law in Equation (
63) has three adjustable parameters, which increases the possibility that the parameters will converge to a local solution. Therefore, we propose an adaptive law with fewer adjustable parameters derived below by transforming the formula.
Substitute the specific expression for the observed object into Equation (
61) and transform the expression as follows:
The gradient is calculated in the same way as for the first adaptation law, and the adaptation law can be derived as follows:
The proof of convergence is presented in a similar procedure. This reduces the number of adjustable parameters while keeping the observer stable.
5. Results and Discussion
The following three types of observers were used to simulate SOC estimation.
The specification of the battery is shown in
Table 1 and simulation conditions are shown in
Table 3. The values of the model parameter from
Table 2 obtained by offline optimization were taken as true values. An initial error of
was given for
. The initial value of SOC was 0.735, and the initial estimate was given an error of
.
Simulations were run on two different datasets, US06 and FUDS. The inputs are shown in
Figure 9 and
Figure 10, and the output data are the output obtained through the equivalent circuit model. The datasets are mainly discharging scenarios, but a few charging scenarios are included.
In the simulations, the observer design parameters were adjusted for each. The design parameters of the proposed observer (adaptive law Equation (73)) were set as follows:
The design parameters of the Manabe approach are .
5.1. US06
Because Luenberger-type observers are not adaptive, the state estimate will never converge to the true value when the plant parameters are unknown. As in the case of fractional-order Kreisselmeier adaptive observers of both adaptive laws, due to the adaptability, the parameters converge to true values. As a result, the SOC estimates also converge to the true values in both adaptive laws. The overshoot near the initial time in the parameter estimation with adaptive law 2 is smaller than that with adaptive law 1.
The
Table 4 and
Table 5 show the estimation accuracy and convergence time for two adaptive laws, where the mean absolute error (MAE) of the estimation error is calculated as a measure of the SOC estimation accuracy. The convergence time is defined as the time at which the error falls below the tolerance and then does not exceed the tolerance again. A value of 0.01 was set as the tolerance for the SOC estimation error, and 0.03 and 0.01 for the parameter errors. The Luenberger-type observer was excluded from this table because it did not adjust parameters and SOC estimation never converged.
Table 4 shows that the estimation accuracy is better for adaptive law 2.
Table 5 also shows that the convergence time of SOC is better for adaptive law 2. This can be explained by the fact that the parameters converge to their true values in a shorter time in adaptive law 2. The reason for the shorter convergence time of the parameters can be attributed to the fact that convergence is easier due to the reduced number of adjustable parameters.
5.2. FUDS
Similar trends to US06 are found: SOC estimation by the Luenberger-type observer did not converge to the true value; adaptive law 2 is superior to adaptive law 2 in terms of the convergence time of SOC and parameters.
6. Conclusions
In this study, we confirmed the superiority of the fractional-order model over the integer-order model of the battery and simulated the SOC estimation. When an observer was applied to the equivalent circuit model, SOC and model parameters could be estimated by using an adaptive fractional-order Kreisselmeier-type observer. The convergence and estimation accuracy were improved by changing the adaptive law to combine redundant adjustable parameters while maintaining the stability of the observer.
In the simulation of SOC estimation conducted in this study, an equivalent circuit model was set up as a plant. For practical use, real data should also be used for the plant output. In addition, various restrictions were attached, such as not including disturbances, the range of SOC for linearization of OCV, making known, and not explicitly considering the effect of temperature. These should be addressed in future studies.