Development of a machine protection system for the Superconducting Beam Test Facility at Fermilab

Fermilab's Superconducting RF Beam Test Facility currently under construction will produce electron beams capable of damaging the acceleration structures and the beam line vacuum chambers in the event of an aberrant accelerator pulse. The accelerator is being designed with the capability to operate with up to 3000 bunches per macro-pulse, 5Hz repetition rate and 1.5 GeV beam energy. It will be able to sustain an average beam power of 72 KW at the bunch charge of 3.2 nC. Operation at full intensity will deposit enough energy in niobium material to approach the melting point of 2500 {\deg}C. In the early phase with only 3 cryomodules installed the facility will be capable of generating electron beam energies of 810 MeV and an average beam power that approaches 40 KW. In either case a robust Machine Protection System (MPS) is required to mitigate effects due to such large damage potentials. This paper will describe the MPS system being developed, the system requirements and the controls issues under consideration.Comment: 3 pp. 13th International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems (ICALEPCS 2011). 10-14 Oct 2011. Grenoble, Franc

The STAR MAPS-based PiXeL detector

The PiXeL detector (PXL) for the Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) of the STAR experiment at RHIC is the first application of the state-of-the-art thin Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) technology in a collider environment. Custom built pixel sensors, their readout electronics and the detector mechanical structure are described in detail. Selected detector design aspects and production steps are presented. The detector operations during the three years of data taking (2014-2016) and the overall performance exceeding the design specifications are discussed in the conclusive sections of this paper

Improving reconfigurable systems reliability by combining periodical test and redundancy techniques: a case study

This paper revises and introduces to the field of reconfigurable computer systems, some traditional techniques used in the fields of fault-tolerance and testing of digital circuits. The target area is that of on-board spacecraft electronics, as this class of application is a good candidate for the use of reconfigurable computing technology. Fault tolerant strategies are used in order for the system to adapt itself to the severe conditions found in space. In addition, the paper describes some problems and possible solutions for the use of reconfigurable components, based on programmable logic, in space applications

Robust Exponential Modulation Integral Observer for Online Detection of the Fundamental and Harmonics in Grid-Connected Power Electronics Equipment

Harmonic current estimation is required in active power filters for compensation purposes. The most efficient way of calculating the total harmonic current up to the infinite order is to subtract the fundamental component from the distorted current. Direct determination of the fundamental component of a distorted current of mains frequency was realized recently with a third-order modulation integral observer. This article shows that using an exponential modulation function (Exp-MF) for the integral observer will: 1) significantly enhance the robustness of the observer against noise and 2) automatically remove the low-frequency envelope arising from the D/A and A/C sampling processes compared to previous polynomial modulation function. These new and advantageous features are supported with detailed analysis and experimental verification. The robust observer can be implemented in grid-connected power electronics circuits that require the instantaneous information of the fundamental and/or harmonic currents. Practical comparative tests with the adaptive notch filter and recursive discrete Fourier transform (DFT) methods in an active power filter have confirmed the good performance under both the steady and dynamic states of the proposed Exp-MF integral observer

Characterization and Emulation of Low-Voltage Power Line Channels for Narrowband and Broadband Communication

The demand for smart grid and smart home applications has raised the recent interest in power line communication (PLC) technologies, and has driven a broad set of deep surveys in low-voltage (LV) power line channels. This book proposes a set of novel approaches, to characterize and to emulate LV power line channels in the frequency range from0.15to 10 MHz, which closes gaps between the traditional narrowband (up to 500 kHz) and broadband (above1.8 MHz) ranges