Control & Electronics for the ESS MEBT

The Control & Electronics of the MEBT is an in-kind contribution to ESS. The Work-Package involves different activities, mostly related to the development of acquisition electronics and the control system.

Acquisition Electronics

In ESS Bilbao we are developing acquisition electronics for the MEBT Instrumentation. The Front End (FE) converts and amplifies the collected current in the instrument into a voltage signal. The signal amplification in the Front End is required for MEBT instrumentation since the tunnel, where the MEBT is installed, is tens of meters away from the gallery, where the signal digitalization is performed. Without signal amplification in the Front End the signal would show instabilities at high frequency. The auxiliary electronics are included in the Back End subrack, that typically contains the power supplies of the system and auxiliary signals for control.

Faraday cup acquisition electronics

EMU acquisition electronics

Control System and EPICS integration

The control system is integrated either in μTCA or VME platforms. There are several AMC, RTM and FMC boards setting different architectures for each beam diagnostic implementation.

The CPU boards used have integrated NXP QorIQ T Series or Intel Core i7 processors and Xilinx Artix-7 and Kintex UltraScale devices.

There are several purposes boards as signal digitalization or synchronization tasks.

The timing and synchronization system is based on MRF (Micro Research Finland).

External integrated systems to control from the main crates are connected through an ethercat bus where Beckhoff modules are set providing physical interfaces to motion control, power supplies control, interlocks…

Siemens PLCs are also used for cooling and slow interlocks functions.

For the control integration, the software is developed in the ESS EPICS Environment and CSS is used for the control GUIs.

Control development

Control integration

EPICS control GUI

SCOPE

Control system