A flexible and scalable software infrastructure and interactive user interfaces for the INFN-LNS accelerators and beamlines

Abstract

For an integrated and more efficient management of the accelerators and beamlines at Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare—Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (INFN LNS), we developed a software platform including advanced user interfaces, high efficiency message exchange protocols, robust and redundant client-server infrastructures. We exploited the most innovative software architectures based on open source technologies. The core of our system is based on the Redis platform, that is a highly efficient in-memory database well suited for a fast exchange of messages between the field devices in the accelerators and along the beam lines and the graphical user interfaces located in the LNS control room. Different types of client applications have been developed for the implementation of the innovative LNS user interfaces: an interactive synoptic panel, a web portal and a mobile application. All the parameters are stored inside a relational database, in order to facilitate and speed up the beam setting for each experiment and to create a historical archive of the related parameters quite useful for possible future reconfigurations. Several powerful tools have been implemented, such as the automatic acquisition and calculation of 2D beam intensity contour plots by using suitable digital image recognition algorithm. It allows the real time analysis of the beam shape and intensity along the beam transport lines as well as the storage of all the relevant parameters in the database.