Activities brief

Activities of the C&DAQ group

The Control and Data Acquisition group activities result from a collaborative effort between the various vertical engineering competencies on Instrumentation, applied to various fusion/physics areas.

Activities are mainly focused in:

• The specification and development of CODAC* systems and components;
• Development of CODAC instrumentation hardware/firmware.
• The development of operation, monitoring, data flow and algorithm codes for CODAC, diagnostics and plasma control systems;
• Real-time/parallel data acquisition and processing;
• Timing, synchronization, event management and data transport networks;
• Collaboration on the development of international instrumentation standards;
• Establishment of International Strategic Partnerships with the Industry;
• Inform the Portuguese industry of fusion CODAC projects;
• Inbound and outbound education and training activities;
• Improving the laboratorial and work-shop infra-structures.

The main R&D outcome is measurement Instrumentation systems aiming at:

• Focused performance
• Reliability and availability
• Low-cost
• State-of-the-art componentes

Collaborations with Fusion Laboratories

Recent Agreements

ITER: FPSC – Fast Plant System Controller prototype.

F4E

• F4E-FPA-375 – Plasma Position Reflectometry
• F4E-FPA-327 – Radial Neutron Camera (RNC) and Radial Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (RGRS)
• F4E-OPE-442 – Design and Performance Assessment of  Integral and Proportional Data Acquisition Electronics for Real-time Acquisition

JET

• Gamma Ray Spectrometer Upgrade (GSU), Lost Alpha Particles Monitor (LRM) and Gamma Ray Camera Upgrade (GCU)
• DNG-G -  Data acquisitionfor the neutron camera diagnostics enhancements.
• GRS - Data acquisitionfor gamma spectroscopy.
• PCU-VS  - ATCA hardware platform for the Plasma Control Upgrade project.
• RTMC - Real-Time Measurement & Control Diagnostics & Infrastructure
• TOFOR - Time-of-FlightNeutron Spectrometer Optimized for high count Rate.
• MPRu- magnetic proton recoil neutron spectrometer.
• Reflectometry measurements- X-mode reflectometry.

COMPASS

• Plasma control and CODAC hardware/software infrastructure
• Gas Injection, Baking, Vacuum and Puffing control system software

IPP: IPP-ICRH-REFLEC, W7-X CODAC digitizers

RFX: Digitizersfor Plasma Positioning

Manpower and Resources

• Currently, the group is composed of 6 Researchers, 4 Junior Researchers and 1 Technician.
• Most of R&D work happens in-house, only a fraction of the manpower is used for commissioning and R&D tasks on international experiments.
• In-house prototyping and testing.       

Collaboration with the industry

• Discussions have been held with international companies
  • Potential collaborations towards ITER
  • Licensing IPFN control & data acquisition systems
  • Co-development of control & data acquisition solutions
• IPFN is trying to improve the collaboration with national industry

Strategy

• Continue collaborations with ITER and other fusion experiments.
• Enlarge the scope of activities to other physics experiments, local or international.
• Establish definite paths for:
  • IP transfer to Industry
  • Outsourcing from Industry
• Improve efficiency of Project activities:
  • Continue R&D of a unified platform of Instrumentation able to cover a large scope of applications in Physics.
  • Establish clear boundaries between Academic activities and Project activities.
• Continue the development of critical components:
  • xTCA hardware, Real-time MARTe framework, EPICS machine control, High-speed codes and algorithms for FPGAs, High-performance networks for database access, real-time processing and synchronization.

*CODAC: COntrol, Data Acquisition and Communications. 

......