GSI, Darmstadt, Germany
Controlling stored beams in particle accelerators requires specially designed RF signals, such as needed for spill control via transverse excitation. The software-defined radio (SDR) technology is adopted as a low cost, yet highly flexible setup to generate such signals in the kHz to MHz regime. A feedback system is build using a combination of digital signal processing with GNU Radio and RF Network-on-Chip (RFNoC) on a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). The system enables digitization of signals from particle detectors and direct tuning of the produced RF waveforms via a feedback controller – implemented on a single device. To allow for triggered operation and to reduce the loop delay to a few ms, custom OOT and RFNoC blocks have been implemented. This contribution reports on the implementation and first test results with beam of the developed spill control system.
