The Joint Accelerator Conferences Website (JACoW) is an international collaboration that publishes the proceedings of accelerator conferences held around the world.
TY - CONF AU - Duckitt, W. AU - Abraham, J. AU - Conradie, J.L. AU - Niesler, T.R. AU - Van Niekerk, M.J. ED - Chrin, Jan ED - Schaa, Volker RW TI - A New Digital Low-level RF Control System for Cyclotrons J2 - Proc. of Cyclotrons2016, Zurich, Switzerland, September 11-16, 2016 C1 - Zurich, Switzerland T2 - International Conference on Cyclotrons and Their Applications T3 - 21 LA - english AB - Stable control of amplitude and phase of the radio frequency (RF) system is critical to the operation of cyclotrons. It directly influences system performance, operability, reliability and beam quality. iThemba LABS operates 13 RF systems between 8 and 81 MHz and at power levels of 50 W to 150 kW. A critical drive has been to replace the 30 year old analog RF control system with modern technology. To this effect a new generic digital low-level RF control system has been designed. The system is field programmable gate array (FPGA) based and is capable of synthesizing RF signals between 5 and 100 MHz in steps of 1 μHz. It can achieve a closed-loop amplitude stability of greater than 1/10000 and a closed-loop phase stability of less than 0.01°. Furthermore, the system is fully integrated with the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) and all system and diagnostic parameters are available to the Control System Studio clients. Three prototypes of the system have been in operation since November 2014. A general analysis of RF control systems as well as the methodology of design, implementation, operational performance and future plans for the system is presented. PB - JACoW CP - Geneva, Switzerland SP - 258 EP - 262 KW - controls KW - FPGA KW - EPICS KW - cyclotron KW - operation DA - 2017/01 PY - 2017 SN - 978-3-95450-167-0 DO - 10.18429/JACoW-Cyclotrons2016-WEB01 UR - http://jacow.org/cyclotrons2016/papers/web01.pdf ER -