Data acquisition system for KOMAC beam monitoring using EPICS middleware

Abstract

The beam diagnostics instrument used to measure the beam properties is one of the important devices for the 100-MeV proton linear accelerator of the KOrea Multi-purpose Accelerator Complex (KOMAC). A data acquisition system (DAQ) is required to collect the output beam signals conditioned in the analog front-end circuitry of a beam loss monitor (BLM) and a beam position monitor (BPM). The electrical beam signal must be digitized, and the sampling has to be synchronized to a global timing system that produces a pulse signal for the pulsed beam operation. The digitized data must be accessible by the experimental physics and industrial control system (EPICS)-based control system, which manages all accelerator control. An input output controller (IOC), which runs Linux on a central process unit (CPU) module with a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) express-based Analog-to-digital converter (ADC) card, has been adopted to satisfy the requirements. An associated Linux driver and EPICS device support module have also been developed. The IOC meets the requirements, and the development and maintenance of software for the IOC is very efficient. In this paper, the details of the DAQ system for the BLM and the BPM with the introduction of the KOMAC beam-diagnostics devices, along with the performance, are described.