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
5. EVALUATION
For the evaluation of the diagnostics application we used two methods of communication.
The first is remote and the second is point-to-point. The remote method requires two
computer systems and of course a BLEDP card. The first computer system resides next
to the Beam Loss Electronic Acquisition Crate (BLEAC) and is connected directly with
it using the Ethernet SFP transceiver at 1 GBps. The diagnostics client is executed in
the second computer, which initiates a connection with the BLEDP server after a request
from the user. The request is sent through the CERN network to the first computer, which
redirects to the corresponding BLEDP card. The point-to-point method is used when the
client is executed in the computer system next to the BLEAC.
The final implementation of the client runs under both Linux and Windows 7 Operating
Systems. For our tests we used a Linux system, featuring an Intel Core i7 2670QM pro-
cessor running at 2.8 GHz, 4 GB of RAM and an Intel SSD Drive for the remote connection.
For the point-to-point connection, a Windows 7 system was engaged, residing next to the
Beam Loss Electronic Acquisition Crate (BLEAC) inside the BLM Laboratory or again a
Windows 7 system next to the BLEAC in the Proton Synchrotron (PS) accelerator facility.
Using the latter system, we can examine real data from the accelerator detectors, which
are connected to the input channels of the BLEDP cards.
5.1 Deliverables and their validity
The final deliverable can be defined as a successfully implemented diagnostics system
that meets the requirements of the Beam Loss Monitoring team. Thereby, the quality of
the end product can be evaluated by the detailed analysis of the system characteristics
against the list of requirements in Chapter 2.
• Communicating with the custom made server, implemented in the BLEDP FPGA,
through the network. Each module has a separate Ethernet link and thus it is ad-
dressed individually by its unique address and port number. Each server is limited
to accept only one client at a time. At this step it is necessary to decide which pro-
tocol (TCP/IP or UDP/IP) is suitable for the project’s needs. The foreseen data rate
should be taken into account.
A user is able to establish a connection with the BLEDP server, through the Online
Panel Interface of the client. All the necessary parameters, depending on the mode
of acquisition, should be set before a Start Communication action. Otherwise, an
error message should appear. It was decided, that the TCP protocol should be used
for a single channel transmission and the UDP protocol for the multi-channel. The
data rates of the two modes were the most important factor for this decision. Of
course, the connection is always established through the TCP socket, regardless of
the acquisition mode, as the UDP protocol is connectionless.
Emmanouil I. Angelogiannopoulos 48