I. Badillo

ESS-Bilbao light-ion linear accelerator and neutron source: design and applications

The baseline design for the ESS-Bilbao light-ion linear accelerator and neutron source has been completed and the normal conducting section of the linac is at present under construction. The machine has been designed to be compliant with ESS specifications following the international guidelines of such project as described in Ref. [1]. The new accelerator facility in Bilbao will serve as a base for support of activities on accelerator physics carried out in Spain and southern Europe in the frame of different ongoing international collaborations. Also, a number of applications have been envisaged in the new Bilbao facility for the outgoing light ion beams as well as from fast neutrons produced by low-energy neutron-capture targets, which are briefly described.

Design and Performance Analysis of a Nonstandard EPICS Fast Controller

Large scientific projects present new technological challenges, such as the distributed control over a communication network. In particular, the middleware Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is the most extended communication standard in particle accelerators. The integration of modern control architectures in these EPICS networks is becoming common, as for example for the PXI/PXIe and xTCA hardware alternatives. In this paper, a different integration procedure for PXI/PXIe real-time controllers from National Instruments is proposed, using LabVIEW as the design tool. This methodology is considered and its performance is analyzed by means of a set of laboratory experiments. This control architecture is proposed for achieving the implementation requirements of fast controllers, which need an important amount of computational power and signal processing capability, with a tight real-time demand. The present paper studies the advantages and drawbacks of this methodology and presents its comprehensive evaluation by means of a laboratory test bench, designed for the application of systematic tests. These tests compare the proposed fast controller performance with a similar system implemented using an standard EPICS IOC provided by the CODAC system.

PXIe-Based LLRF Architecture and Versatile Test Bench for Heavy Ion Linear Acceleration

This paper describes the architecture of a digital LLRF system for heavy-ion acceleration developed under the specification of the projected future heavy-ion accelerator facility in Huelva, Spain. A prototype LLRF test bench operating at 80 MHz in CW mode has been designed and built. The core LLRF control has been digitally implemented on a PXIe chassis, including an FPGA for digital signal processing and a real time controller. The test bench is completed with a low phase and amplitude noise signal generator used as master frequency reference, an analog front end for reference modulation and signal conditioning, some RF components completing the circuit, as well as a tunable resonant cavity at 80 MHz, whose RF amplitude, phase and frequency are real-time controlled and monitored. The presented LLRF system is mainly digitally implemented using a PXIe platform provided by National Instruments , and is based on IQ modulation and demodulation. The system can be configured to use both direct sampling and undersampling techniques, resulting thus in a high performance and versatile RF control system without the need of excessive computational resources or very high speed acquisition hardware. All the system is programmed using the LabVIEW environment, which makes the prototyping process and its reconfigurability much easier.

New PXIe-based LLRF architecture and test bench for heavy ion linear acceleration

This work describes the architecture of a digital LLRF system for heavy-ion acceleration developed under the specification of the projected future heavy-ion accelerator facility in Huelva, Spain. A prototype LLRF test bench operating at 80MHz in CW mode has been designed and built, being under test in the laboratory. The core LLRF control has been digitally implemented on a PXIe chassis, including an FPGA for digital signal processing and a real time controller. The test bench is completed with a good quality signal generator used as master frequency reference, an analog front end for reference modulation and signal conditioning, small RF components completing the circuit, as well as an aluminium tunable resonant cavity at 80 MHz, whose RF amplitude, phase and frequency are realtime controlled and monitored. The presented LLRF system is mainly digitally implemented using a PXIe platform provided by National Instruments, and is based on IQ modulation and demodulation. The system can be configured to use both direct sampling and undersampling techniques, resulting thus in a high performance RF control system without the need of excessive computational resources or very high speed acquisition hardware. All the system is programmed using the LabVIEW environment, which makes much easier the prototyping process and its reconfigurability. The test bench comprises the core LLRF digital PXIe platform together with the cavity, which are connected together through an RF amplifier before the cavity input. Several tests are currently under way using the presented test bench to evaluate the performance of the proposed digital PXIe LLRF architecture for heavy ion linear acceleration following the specifications of the projected future Huelva accelerator.

Performance analysis of a non-standard EPICS fast controller

The recent large scientific projects present new technological challenges, such as the distributed control over a communication network. In particular, the middleware EPICS is the most extended communication standard in particle accelerators. The integration of modern control architectures in these EPICS networks is becoming common, as for example for the PXI/PXIe and xTCA hardware alternatives. In this work, a different integration procedure for PXIe real time controllers from National Instruments is proposed, using LabVIEW as the design tool. This control architecture is proposed for achieving the implementation requirements of fast controllers, which need an important amount of computational power and signal processing capability, with a tight real-time demand. The present work studies the advantages and drawbacks of this methodology and presents its comprehensive evaluation by means of a laboratory test bench, designed for the application of systematic tests. These tests compare the proposed fast controller performance with a similar system implemented using an standard EPICS IOC provided by the CODAC system.