Real-Time Regulation of Beam-Based Feedback: Implementing an FPGA Solution for a Continuous Wave Linear Accelerator.

Area of Science:

• Accelerator Physics
• Control Systems Engineering
• Digital Signal Processing

Background:

• Fast industrial processes require real-time control implementations.
• Stabilizing electron bunch arrival time in linear accelerators is crucial for applications.
• Traditional methods implicitly stabilized beams; modern approaches use dedicated beam-based feedback (BBF).

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a real-time feasible implementation of a high-order H2 regulator for electron linear accelerator control.
• To upgrade the control system of the electron linear accelerator for beams with high brilliance and low emittance (ELBE) using BBF.
• To address the relevance of implementing a designed control algorithm in hardware.

Main Methods:

• Development of a high-order H2 regulator implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
• Utilizing hardware description language (HDL) VHDL for simulation and synthesis.
• Verification through a dedicated FPGA testbench.

Main Results:

• Simulation and synthesis results demonstrate the digital solution's feasibility for high bunch repetition rates (e.g., 100 kHz).
• The FPGA-based implementation achieves sufficient speed for ELBE's operational requirements.
• Successful verification of the implementation using an FPGA testbench.

Conclusions:

• The proposed FPGA-based digital regulator offers a real-time feasible solution for electron bunch arrival time stabilization.
• This approach enhances the control capabilities of linear accelerators like ELBE.
• The digital implementation meets the speed requirements for advanced accelerator control applications.