Design and Development of a Diagnostics Client for a Beam Loss ...

Design and Development of a Diagnostics Client for a Beam Loss Measurement System at CERN
3. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
After giving the general information about the BLM for the Injectors project, that is going
to be needed in the next sessions, we are going to describe the hardware architecture
and implementation of the new BLM system. This up-to-date BLM system will be included
for the monitoring of the beam losses, machine protection and is still under development
in terms of hardware (Electronics) and low-level software. The system is making use of
reprogrammable devices, i.e. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), to allow flexibility
and target all injector’s requirements. An overview of the new BLM system can be seen
in Figure 2 [19].
3.1 Description of the new BLM System
Figure 2: Overview of the new BLM System
The purpose of the new Beam Loss Monitoring System (BLM) is the beam setup and ma-
chine protection of the Injector accelerators at CERN. For their upgrade to higher beam
energies and intensities, this new BLM system is under development. It will focus on pro-
viding faster measurement updates with higher dynamic range and the ability to accept
more types of detectors as input compared to its predecessors. The detectors are con-
nected to the acquisition part of the system. These detectors in the majority of the cases, is
foreseen to use ionization chambers similar to those developed for the LHC. Nonetheless,
several other types, such as secondary emission monitors, diamonds and Cherenkov de-
tectors, may need to be used in some locations to cover particular cases. The detectors
will be connected with the front-end using coaxial double-shielded cables and wherever
possible, these cables will pass through enclosed cable trays, in order to make use of
any possible means for noise reduction. The digitization of the detectors current input will
make use of a new concept, which is currently under development. The input channel
circuit should be able to measure current from 10 pA to 200 mA, a dynamic range of 10 11 ,
making use of two measurement methods. These methods will be explained briefly in the
next chapters. The connection between the acquisition and the processing part of the
Emmanouil I. Angelogiannopoulos 16