Slow Control System Research Articles

兰州重离子加速器冷却存储环慢引出控制系统

兰州重离子加速器冷却存储环慢引出控制系统

Data acquisition and online monitoring software for CBM test beams

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment is intended to run at the FAIR facility that is currently being built at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany. For testing of future CBM detector and read-out electronics prototypes, several test beam campaigns have been performed at different locations, such as GSI, COSY, and CERN PS. The DAQ software has to treat various data inputs: standard VME modules on the MBS system, and different kinds of FPGA boards, read via USB, Ethernet, or optical links. The Data Acquisition Backbone Core framework (DABC) is able to combine such different data sources with event-builder processes running on regular Linux PCs. DABC can also retrieve the instrumental set-up data from EPICS slow control systems and insert it into the event data stream for later analysis. Vice versa, the DIM based DABC control protocol has been integrated to the general CBM EPICS IOC by means of an EPICS-DIM interface. Hence the DAQ can be monitored and steered with a CSS based operator GUI. The CBM online monitoring analysis is based on the GSI Go4 framework which can directly connect to DABC online data via sockets, or process stored data from list-mode files. A Go4 sub-framework has been implemented to provide possibility of parallel development of analysis code for different sub-detectors groups. This allows divide the Go4 components up into independent software packages that can run either standalone, or together at the beam-time in a full set-up.

The distributed Slow Control System of the XENON100 experiment

The XENON100 experiment, in operation at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy, was designed to search for evidence of dark matter interactions inside a volume of liquid xenon using a dual-phase time projection chamber. This paper describes the Slow Control System (SCS) of the experiment with emphasis on the distributed architecture as well as on its modular and expandable nature. The system software was designed according to the rules of Object-Oriented Programming and coded in Java, thus promoting code reusability and maximum flexibility during commissioning of the experiment. The SCS has been continuously monitoring the XENON100 detector since mid 2008, remotely recording hundreds of parameters on a few dozen instruments in real time, and setting emergency alarms for the most important variables.

The slow control system of the GERDA double beta decay experimentat Gran Sasso

GERDA is an experiment designed and built to study double beta decays of 76Ge. It is currently in operation at the Gran Sasso underground laboratories (LNGS). A custom slow control system has been designed to monitor and control all the critical parameters for the proper functioning of the experiment. The main sub-components of the experiment (Cryostat, Clean Room, Water Tank, electronic crates and temperatures, High Voltage Systems, Radon Monitor and Source Insertion System) are constantly monitored by several distributed clients which write acquired data to a relational database (PostgreSQL). The latter allows to maintain a history of the whole experiment and, performing correlation between different and independent components, is useful to debug possible system malfunctions. The system is complemented by a Web server, a lightweight and efficient interface to the user on shifts and to the on-call experts, and by a dedicated Alarm dispatcher which distributes the errors generated by the components to the users allowing to react in short time. The whole project has been built around open source and custom software.

Off-line data quality monitoring for the GERDA experiment

Gerda is an experiment searching for the neutrinoless ββ decay of 76Ge. The experiment uses an array of high-purity germanium detectors, enriched in 76Ge, directly immersed in liquid argon. Gerda recently started the physics data taking using eight enriched coaxial detectors. The status of the experiment has to be closely monitored in order to promptly identify possible instabilities or problems. The on-line slow control system is complemented by a regular off-line monitoring of data quality. This ensures that data are qualified to be used in the physics analysis and allows to reject data sets which do not meet the minimum quality standards. The off-line data monitoring is entirely performed within the software framework Gelatio. In addition, a relational database, complemented by a web-based interface, was developed to support the off-line monitoring and to automatically provide information to daily assess data quality. The concept and the performance of the off-line monitoring tools were tested and validated during the one-year commissioning phase.

FTU toroidal magnet power supply slow control using ITER CODAC Core System

FTU (Frascati Tokamak Upgrade) three-level slow control system has undergone several enhancements during its lifetime, involving essentially the supervisory and medium level, while the lower level is still mainly based on old Westinghouse Numalogic PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller). The legacy PLC controlling the toroidal magnet flywheel generator, named MFG1, is now being replaced with a more modern Siemens Simatic S7 PLC, because of its versatility an the ability to be integrated via standard networking protocol.The upgrade to this family of Siemens PLCs, which in the meantime has been selected as standard by ITER CODAC, has made MFG1 slow control an ideal candidate to deploy ITER CODAC software technologies and architecture to a running plant in an operating tokamak environment. A project has thus been started to port MFG1 control to ITER CODAC I&C architecture using the software package CODAC Core System to interface the PLC with the ITER standard systems for instrumentation and control, Plant System Host (PSH) and Mini-CODAC, developing dedicated HMI (Human–Machine Interface) and realizing the communication layer between MFG1 plant system and FTU supervisor.This paper will give a full account of the project and will report the results that have been obtained up to now, focusing also on the definite advantages provided by a distributed control architecture compared to the supervisor-dependent one still running at FTU, in view of future fusion devices.

The data acquisition and transport design for NEMO Phase 2

Many high energy physics experiments (Auger, IceCube, NEMO, Km3Net) currently taking data or planned in the near future consist of big and sparse detectors that acquire a huge amount of data. This kind of topology requires the ability to acquire physics information in different places of the detector and correlate them using the occurrence time, usually with a sub-ns precision. The architecture described here provides a real-time data transport layer, used to implement the data acquisition system for the NEMO experiment, and consists of a synchronous link with fixed and deterministic latency. The system clock, distributed at every level of the apparatus, has been derived by the signals provided by a GPS receiver during the operating configuration. The aim of this contribution is to give an overview of the NEMO electronic system: the underwater electronics sample signals from photomultipliers and acquires slow-control data from both oceanographic instruments and dedicated sensors, allowing to monitor the operational conditions of the apparatus. The whole data are sent to the laboratory through a fully bi-directional fiber optic link. On-shore the data are received by dedicated boards that distribute them to the first-level trigger and to the slow-control system. A description of the different stages of data acquisition and transport will be given.

A message-queuing framework for STAR's online monitoring and metadata collection

We report our experience on migrating STARs Online Services (Run Control System, Data Acquisition System, Slow Control System and Subsystem Monitoring) from direct read/write database accesses to a modern non-blocking message-oriented infrastructure. Based on the Advanced Messaging Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and standards, this novel approach does not specify the message data structure, allowing great flexibility in its use. After careful consideration, we chose Google Protocol Buffers as our primary (de)serialization format for structured data exchange. This migration allows us to reduce the overall system complexity and greatly improve the reliability of the metadata collection and the performance of our online services in general. We will present this new framework through its software architecture overview, providing details about our staged and non-disruptive migration process as well as details of the implementation of pluggable components to provide future improvements without compromising stability and availability of services.

On the model-based networked control for singularly perturbed systems with nonlinear uncertainties

In this paper, the model-based networked control is addressed for a class of singularly perturbed control systems with nonlinear uncertainties. An approximate linear slow and fast control system of the plant, which can be obtained by omitting the nonlinear uncertainties, are used as a model to estimate the state behavior of the plant between transmission times. The stability of model-based networked control systems is investigated under the assumption that the controller/actuator is updated with the sensor information at constant time intervals. It is shown that there exists the allowable upper bound of the singular perturbation parameter such that the model-based networked control system is globally exponentially stable.

Feedforward Pitch Control Using Wind Speed Estimation

The dynamic response of a multi-MW wind turbine to a sudden change in wind speed is usually slow, because of the slow pitch control system. This could cause a large excursion of the rotor speed and an output power over the rated. A feedforward pitch control can be applied to minimize the fluctuations of these parameters. This paper introduces the complete design steps for a feedforward pitch controller, which consist of three stages, i.e. the aerodynamic torque estimation, the 3-dimensional lookup table for the wind seed estimation, and the calculation of the feedforward pitch amount. The effectiveness of the feedforward control is verified through numerical simulations of a multi-MW wind turbine.

R&D of Lhaaso-Wcda

As one of the important parts of the LHAASO Project, the Water Cherenkov Detector Array (WCDA) is planned to be built in Yangbajing, Tibet, China soon. In order to fully understand the engineering issues and the basic performance of the water Cherenkov detection technique, a prototype water Cherenkov detector has been built and operat- ed in Beijing, and an engineering array has been constructed on site. With the help of the prototype detector, performance related to cosmic muon signals and water quality maintenance has been studied and acquired. Studies of the engineering array are also progressing smoothly: nine 8-in PMTs and their electronics and DAQ systems have been deployed; an optical calibration system, a water recycling and purification system, and a slow control system, have been installed; the data taking started, and the data analysis is going on. These studies will offer a great help to the future work of the full array.

RENO Data Analysis and Slow Control and Monitoring System

RENO Data Analysis and Slow Control and Monitoring System

The slow control system of the HADES RPC wall

Abstract The control and monitoring system for the new HADES RPC time of flight wall installed at GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung GmbH (Darmstadt, Germany), is described. The slow control system controls/monitors about 6000 variables from different physical devices via a distributed architecture, which uses intensively the 1-wire ® bus. The software implementation is based on the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) software tool kit providing low cost, reliability and adaptability without requiring large hardware resources. The control and monitoring system attends five different subsystems: front-end electronics, low voltage, high voltage, gases, and detector.

Advanced data extraction infrastructure: Web based system for management of time series data

During operation of high energy physics experiments a big amount of slow control data is recorded. It is necessary to examine all collected data checking the integrity and validity of measurements. With growing maturity of AJAX technologies it becomes possible to construct sophisticated interfaces using web technologies only.Our solution for handling time series, generally slow control data, has a modular architecture: backend system for data analysis and preparation, a web service interface for data access and a fast AJAX web display. In order to provide fast interactive access the time series are aggregated over time slices of few predefined lengths. The aggregated values are stored in the temporary caching database and, then, are used to create generalizing data plots. These plots may include indication of data quality and are generated within few hundreds of milliseconds even if very high data rates are involved. The extensible export subsystem provides data in multiple formats including CSV, Excel, ROOT, and TDMS. The search engine can be used to find periods of time where indications of selected sensors are falling into the specified ranges. Utilization of the caching database allows performing most of such lookups within a second. Based on this functionality a web interface facilitating fast (Google-maps style) navigation through the data has been implemented.The solution is at the moment used by several slow control systems at Test Facility for Fusion Magnets (TOSKA) and Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN).

Development and Installation of Voltage Management System for Voltage and Reactive Power Control of Wide Area System

KEPCO proposes enhanced voltage management system that is a coordinate voltage control system between the hierarchical voltage control system and the slow voltage control system. It has been installing in Jeju island. VMS consists of a master controller, CVC (Continuous Voltage Controller) and DVC (Discrete Voltage Controller). CVC consists of main controller, FDMU (Field Data Measurement Unit) and several RPDs (Reactive Power Dispatcher). CVC has a control scheme with AVRs of generator to maintain the voltage of a pilot bus in a power system, DVC has a control scheme with static reactive power sources, like a shunt capacitor, a shunt reactor, ULTC and so on, to maintain the reactive power reserve of a power system and a master controller is executed to recover reactive power margin of a power system through coordinated control between CVC and DVC.

Design and implementation of the detector control system for the BESIII drift chamber cosmic ray test

After the construction of the BESIII drift chamber, a long period of cosmic rays test is necessary to verify its performance. This also provides a good opportunity to integrate the detector readout electronics and Detector Control System (DCS) into a unified working system. The goal of the DCS is to guarantee reliable physics data quality and the safe operation of the detector. It monitors and controls the HV, gas, VME crates and the environmental variables. The upper-level system is mainly developed from LabVIEW and the lower-level system mainly uses MCU and PLC technology. The system is designed to be highly flexible and scalable so that it can be applied to other detectors with little or no change. In the immediate future, it will be integrated into the entire BESIII Slow Control System.

ATLAS tile calorimeter cesium calibration controland analysis software

An online control system to calibrate and monitor ATLAS Barrel hadroniccalorimeter (TileCal) with a movable radioactive source, driven by liquid flow, is described.To read out and control the system an online software has been developed, using ATLASTDAQ components like DVS (Diagnostic and Verification System) to verify the hardware beforerunning, IS (Information Server) for data and status exchange between networked computers,and other components like DDC (DCS to DAQ Connection), to connect to PVSS-based slowcontrol systems of Tile Calorimeter, high voltage and low voltage. A system of scripting facilities,based on Python language, is used to handle all the calibration and monitoring processes fromhardware perspective to final data storage, including various abnormal situations. A QT basedgraphical user interface to display the status of the calibration system during the cesium sourcescan is described. The software for analysis of the detector response, using online data, isdiscussed. Performance of the system and first experience from the ATLAS pit are presented.

The OPERA Spectrometer Slow Control System

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> OPERA is a long-baseline neutrino experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratories (LNGS), to observe <formula formulatype="inline"><tex>$\nu _{\tau} $</tex></formula> appearance in a <formula formulatype="inline"><tex>$\nu _{\mu} $</tex></formula> neutrino beam produced at CERN. The detector is a structure of two super modules, each built-up of a massive lead/nuclear-emulsion target complemented by electronic detectors and a magnetic spectrometer. The two magnets are instrumented by 1000 Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) detectors for a total surface of about 3200 <formula formulatype="inline"><tex>${\rm m}^{2}$</tex></formula>. The slow control system has been designed to monitor and control all the critical parameters for the proper functioning of the spectrometers. The different hardware (Magnet and RPC High Voltage power supplies, RPC current meters, Magnet and RPC temperature sensors, RPC timing boards) is read out via CAN bus connections by several distributed clients. The clients write the data to a relational database (PostgresSQL) which is the heart of the system: it gives persistence to the data and allows to perform correlations useful to debug possible system malfunctioning. Among the various tools (histograms and XML Configuration Managers), a controller process checks for possible failures of the system using data from the database and generates warnings/alarms for people on shift. </para>

Stellarator WEGA as a test-bed for the WENDELSTEIN 7-X control system concepts

The concepts for the control of the fusion experiment WENDELSTEIN 7-X (W7-X) consider all requirements regarding safety, steady-state operation, flexibility, availability, performance and scalability. The early demonstration of the steady-state control concepts with all interacting parties is necessary to minimize development costs since integrated tests of components are scheduled for a later stage of the W7-X project planning. Therefore the implementation of an integrated test-bed for the control concepts of W7-X is very important to minimize project risks. Main objectives of the test-bed project are an integrated test of control, data acquisition, diagnostics operation and data processing in a W7-X-like environment (steady-state segmented operation, real-time control, interplay of the central slow control system with components control systems, on-line data analysis tools), a demonstration of the W7-X safety concept and the education of engineers and session leaders for a W7-X-like machine operation. The contribution describes the use of the small in-house stellarator experiment WEGA as test-bed for the W7-X control concepts.

The OPERA muon spectrometers

The OPERA experiment will study ν μ to ν τ oscillations through τ appearance on the 732 km long CERN to Gran Sasso baseline. The magnet yokes of the two muon spectrometers are instrumented with 48 planes of high resistivity bakelite Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC) operated in streamer mode. Each plane covers about 70 m 2 . A general introduction to the system installation and commissioning will be given. Four RPC planes were instrumented and the first tests were performed confirming a good behavior of the installed RPCs in terms of intrinsic noise and operating currents. The measured noise maps agree with those obtained in the extensive quality test performed at surface. Counting rates are below 20 Hz / m 2 . Single and multiple cosmic muon tracks were also reconstructed. The estimated efficiency is close to the geometrical limit and the very first measurements of the absolute and differential muon flux are in agreement with the expectations. Finally, a description of the readout electronics and of the slow control system is given.