Real-time data transfer in the TCV advanced plasma control system

A high performance system, specially designed for real-time plasma control and event detection on fusion experiments has been developed by the Centro de Fusao Nuclear of the Instituto Superior Tecnico (CFN/IST). Presently it is being integrated into the advanced plasma control system of the TCV tokamak. It will substitute the PID controllers and the analogue G matrix of the actual control system with a digital control system based on DSPs to allow an easy change and configuration of the algorithms and parameters used for control. The digital control system needs to exchange a large amount of data among DSPs in every control cycle. The architecture of the digital system and the data transfer among DSPs are described in this paper. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.