State-of-health estimation for lithium-ion batteries based on GWO–VMD-transformer neural network

State-of-health (SOH) estimation of lithium-ion batteries stands as a fundamental metric within the battery management system. It reflects the current level of battery aging and is important for early warning of battery failure to avoid unsafe battery behavior. Therefore, accurate SOH estimation can ensure safe and reliable battery operation. In this paper, the capacity data of the discharge phase are used as the input of the SOH estimation model, and a gray wolf optimization (GWO)–variable mode decomposition (VMD)-transformer-based SOH estimation method for lithium-ion batteries is proposed in a data-driven framework. First, the GWO algorithm is adopted to optimize VMD to decompose the original battery capacity degradation sequence into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Then, the transformer is used to separately predict each of these IMFs. Finally, the predicted values of each IMF are integrated to obtain the final prediction of the battery capacity degradation sequence. The model undergoes testing across various datasets, and comparative evaluations are conducted against other data-driven prediction models. The experimental findings underscore the superior SOH estimation performance of the proposed method, along with its robustness when confronted with diverse types of lithium-ion batteries, spanning distinct operational conditions and different aging degrees.