No Arabic abstract
Waveform feature is one of the requirements for the FRIB LLRF controllers. It is desired that the LLRF con-trollers store the internal data (e.g. the amplitude and phase information of forward/reverse/cavity signals) for at least one second of sampled data at the RF feedback control loop rate (around 1.25 MHz). One use case is to freeze the data buffer when an interlock event happens and read out the fast data to diagnose the problem. An-other use case is to monitor a set of signals at a decimated rate (user settable) while the data buffer is still running, like using an oscilloscope. The detailed implementation will be discussed in the paper, including writing data into the DDR memory through the native interface, reading out the data through the bus interface, etc.
The functions of the Low-Level Radio Frequency (LLRF) system at European Spallation Source (ESS) are implemented on different Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) boards in a Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture (MTCA) crate. Besides the algorithm, code that provides access to the peripherals connected to the FPGA is necessary. In order to provide a common platform for the FPGA developments at ESS - the ESS FPGA Framework has been designed. The framework facilitates the integration of different algorithms on different FPGA boards. Three functions are provided by the framework: (1) Communication interfaces to peripherals, e.g. Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) and on-board memory, (2) Upstream communication with the control system over Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe), and (3) Configuration of the on-board peripherals. To keep the framework easily extensible by Intellectual Property (IP) blocks and to enable seamless integration with the Xilinx design tools, the Advanced eXtensible Interface version 4 (AXI4) bus is the chosen communication interconnect. Furthermore, scripts automatize the building of the FPGA configuration, software components and the documentation. The LLRF control algorithms have been successfully integrated into the framework.
The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University provides a unique opportunity to access some of the nations most specialized scientific resources: radioisotopes. An excess of useful radioisotopes will be formed as FRIB fulfills its basic science mission of providing rare isotope beams. In order for the FRIB beams to reach high-purity, many of the isotopes are discarded and go unused. If harvested, the unused isotopes could enable cutting-edge research for diverse applications ranging from medical therapy and diagnosis to nuclear security. Given that FRIB will have the capability to create about 80 percent of all possible atomic nuclei, harvesting at FRIB will provide a fast path for access to a vast array of isotopes of interest in basic and applied science investigations. To fully realize this opportunity, infrastructure investment is required to enable harvesting and purification of otherwise unused isotopes. An investment in isotope harvesting at FRIB will provide the nation with a powerful resource for development of crucial isotope applications.
We consider the symbolic controller synthesis approach to enforce safety specifications on perturbed, nonlinear control systems. In general, in each state of the system several control values might be applicable to enforce the safety requirement and in the implementation one has the burden of picking a particular control value out of possibly many. We present a class of implementation strategies to obtain a controller with certain performance guarantees. This class includes two existing implementation strategies from the literature, based on discounted payoff and mean-payoff games. We unify both approaches by using games characterized by a single discount factor determining the implementation. We evaluate different implementations from our class experimentally on two case studies. We show that the choice of the discount factor has a significant influence on the average long-term costs, and the best performance guarantee for the symbolic model does not result in the best implementation. Comparing the optimal choice of the discount factor here with the previously proposed values, the costs differ by a factor of up to 50. Our approach therefore yields a method to choose systematically a good implementation for safety controllers with quantitative objectives.
The performance of a novel tracking detector developed for the focal plane of the NSCL/FRIB S800 magnetic spectrometer is presented. The detector comprises a large-area drift chamber equipped with a hybrid Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detector (MPGD)-based readout. The latter consists of a position-sensitive Micromegas detector preceded by a two-layer M-THGEM multiplier as a pre-amplification stage. The signals from the Micromegas readout are processed by a data acquisition system based on the General Electronics for TPC (GET). The drift chamber has an effective area of around 60x30 cm^2, which matches to the very large acceptance of the S800 spectrometer. This work discusses in detail the results of performance evaluation tests carried out with a low-energy alpha-particles source and with high-energy heavy-ion beams with the detector installed at the S800 focal plane. In this latter case, the detector was irradiated with a 150 MeV/u 78Kr36+ beam as well as a heavy-ion fragmentation cocktail beam produced by the 78Kr36+ beam impinging on a thin beryllium target. Sub-millimeter position resolution is obtained in both dispersive and non-dispersive directions.
A compact, remote controlled, cost efficient diagnostic station has been developed to measure the charge, the profile and the emittance for low energy proton beams. It has been installed and tested in the proton beam line of the Project Prometheus at SANAEM of the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority.