Advanced binary search pattern for impedance spectra classification for determining the state of charge of a lithium iron phosphate cell using a support vector machine

Abstract. Further improvements on the novel method for state of charge (SOC) determination of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells based on the impedance spectra classification are presented. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is applied to impedance spectra of a LFP cell, with each impedance spectrum representing a distinct SOC for a predefined temperature. As a SVM is a binary classifier, only the distinction between two SOC can be computed in one iteration of the algorithm. Therefore a search pattern is necessary. A balanced tree search was implemented with good results. In order to further improvements of the SVM method, this paper discusses two new search pattern, namely a linear search and an imbalanced tree search, the later one based on an initial educated guess. All three search pattern were compared under various aspects like accuracy, efficiency, tolerance of disturbances and temperature dependancy. The imbalanced search tree shows to be the most efficient search pattern if the initial guess is within less than ±5 % SOC of the original SOC in both directions and exhibits the best tolerance for high disturbances. Linear search improves the rate of exact classifications for almost every temperature. It also improves the robustness against high disturbances and can even detect a certain number of false classifications which makes this search pattern unique. The downside is a much lower efficiency as all impedance spectra have to be evaluated while the tree search pattern only evaluate those on the tree path.