| Paper | Title | Page |
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| TUD001 | Preliminary Design of the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) Telescope Control System | 343 |
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The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a 1% Square Kilometre Array (SKA) pathfinder radio telescope, comprising of 36 12-metre diameter reflector antennas, each with a Focal Plane Array consisting of approximately 100 dual-polarised elements operating at centimetre wavelengths and yielding a wide field-of-view (FOV) on the sky of about 30 square degrees. ASKAP is currently under construction and will be located in the remote radio-quiet desert Midwest region of Western Australia. It is expected to be fully operational in 2013. Key requirements for the ASKAP control system include: control and monitoring of widely distributed devices, handling of a large number of monitoring points (< 150,000), accurate time synchronisation and remote semi-automated operations. After evaluating several software technologies we have decided to use the EPICS framework for the Telescope Operating System and the Internet Communications Engine (ICE*) middleware for the high-level control message bus. This paper presents a preliminary design of the ASKAP control system as well as describing why we have chosen EPICS and ICE and how both technologies fit in the overall ASKAP software architecture.
(*) ICE is a trademark of ZeroC Inc. |
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| TUD002 | The Newly Constructed EPICS-based Control System for KSTAR Tokamak Device | 1 |
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| The KSTAR is the newest superconducting tokamak to have a mission to perform fusion researches for future energy source, which accomplished the 1st plasma in 2008 after the completion of design, fabrication and assembly since 1995. The KSTAR integrated control system (KICS) aimed at integration of all plant system I&Cs, development of schema for tokamak operation and relevant S/W, achievement of synchronized operation, and machine protection. For those purposes, we elaborated on the selection of a middleware for the KICS focused on performance, reliability and maintainability, and finally decided to use EPICS. In addition, the KICS adapted several open-source tools in the fields of data management and user interfaces such as MDSplus, Qt, Mysql, etc. For the initial operation, we integrated 17 types of plant systems with various H/W platforms and installed about 200 controllers to handle about 18,000 Process Variables. This paper focuses on the development of the KICS and the operational results. Moreover, the evaluation of EPICS for tokamak control is explained by analyzing the differences between tokamak and accelerator control. | ||
| TUD003 | Supporting Multiple Control Systems at Fermilab | 346 |
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| The Fermilab control system, ACNET, is used for controlling the Tevatron and all of its pre-accelerators. However, other smaller experiments at Fermilab have been using different controls systems, in particular DOOCS and EPICS. This paper reports some of the steps taken at Fermilab to integrate support for these outside systems. We will describe specific tools that we have built or adapted to facilitate interaction between the architectures. We also examine some of the difficulties that arise from managing this heterogenous environment. Incompatibilities as well as common elements will be described. | ||
| TUD004 | ALMA Software Project Management, Lessons Learned | 349 |
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| The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the largest radio telescope currently under construction by a world-wide collaboration. The first antennas (the total will be 54 12m antennas and 12 7m antennas) are being commissioned to become part of the interferometer at a high site (5000m) in Chile. The ALMA Software (~ 70% completed) is in daily use and was developed as an end-to-end system including proposal preparation, dynamic scheduling, instrument control, data archiving, automatic and manual data processing, and support for operations. The management lessons learned will be explained. Aspects described will go from requirements analysis to the use of a development framework: ALMA Common Software (ACS) in our case. The process used to provide regular releases will be outlined, including temporary cross-subsystem teams. The importance of integrated regression tests will be stressed, but also the need to validate the system with users. Among the project management tools risk analysis, earned value measures and tracking of requirements completion will be presented. Monitoring progress with reviews and the possible impact on completion dates will also be discussed. | ||
| TUD005 | Large-scale Fusion Research System Integration Based on the Superconducting Large Helical Device and Plasma Simulator at NIFS | 352 |
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| The representative facilities at NIFS are the superconducting Large Helical Device (LHD) and Plasma Simulator. An overview of such a large-scale fusion research system will be presented. LHD is the plasma confining machine with having superconducting helical and poloidal coils. The LHD experiment started in 1998, and stable operation under the condition of liquid He temperature with a continuous operation for half a year typically at each year has been so far successfully demonstrated for the period of 11 years. Real-time machine control and data acquisition of diagnostics are also established well for long pulse operation up to 54 min. For understanding the plasma properties, Plasma Simulator consists of a supercomputer having 77 TF computing speed and 16 TB main memory (these will be upgraded to 315 TF and 32 TB in 2012). The main aim of the Plasma Simulator is to construct LHD Numerical Test Reactor for designing an optimum reactor. Experimental remote participation to the LHD experiment and remote utilization of Plasma Simulator are well realized with the fast network SINET3. Such successful system integration will contribute to design of future large research systems. | ||
| TUD006 | Design Status of the TPS Control System | 355 |
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| The Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) project will build a new 3 GeV synchrotron light source at the site of NSRRC. Refinement of the TPS control system design is on going. The control system is based on EPICS toolkits framework. Guidelines for hardware platform and operating system choice will be addressed. Various EPICS test bed has be setup to evaluate selected hardware and software components. The TPS control system will provide versatile environments for machine commissioning, operation, and accelerator research. The open architecture will facilitate machine upgrade, modification easily and minimize efforts for machine maintenance. Performance and reliability of the control system will be guaranteed from the initial design phase. Current efforts will be summary in this report. |