Author: Marchhart, M.
Paper Title Page
MOBAUST03 The MedAustron Accelerator Control System 9
 
  • J. Gutleber, M. Benedikt
    CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
  • A.B. Brett, A. Fabich, M. Marchhart, R. Moser, M. Thonke, C. Torcato de Matos
    EBG MedAustron, Wr. Neustadt, Austria
  • J. Dedič
    Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
 
  This paper presents the architecture and design of the MedAustron particle accelerator control system. The facility is currently under construction in Wr. Neustadt, Austria. The accelerator and its control system are designed at CERN. Accelerator control systems for ion therapy applications are characterized by rich sets of configuration data, real-time reconfiguration needs and high stability requirements. The machine is operated according to a pulse-to-pulse modulation scheme and beams are described in terms of ion type, energy, beam dimensions, intensity and spill length. An irradiation session for a patient consists of a few hundred accelerator cycles over a time period of about two minutes. No two cycles within a session are equal and the dead-time between two cycles must be kept low. The control system is based on a multi-tier architecture with the aim to achieve a clear separation between front-end devices and their controllers. Off-the-shelf technologies are deployed wherever possible. In-house developments cover a main timing system, a light-weight layer to standardize operation and communication of front-end controllers, the control of the power converters and a procedure programming framework for automating high-level control and data analysis tasks. In order to be able to roll out a system within a predictable schedule, an "off-shoring" project management process was adopted: A frame agreement with an integrator covers the provision of skilled personnel that specifies and builds components together with the core team.  
slides icon Slides MOBAUST03 [7.483 MB]  
 
MOPMN005 ProShell – The MedAustron Accelerator Control Procedure Framework 246
 
  • R. Moser, A.B. Brett, M. Marchhart, C. Torcato de Matos
    EBG MedAustron, Wr. Neustadt, Austria
  • J. Dedič, S. Sah
    Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • J. Gutleber
    CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
 
  MedAustron is a centre for ion-therapy and research in currently under construction in Austria. It features a synchrotron particle accelerator for proton and carbon-ion beams. This paper presents the architecture and concepts for implementing a procedure framework called ProShell. Procedures to automate high level control and analysis tasks for commissioning and during operation are modelled with Petri-Nets and user code is implemented with C#. It must be possible to execute procedures and monitor their execution progress remotely. Procedures include starting up devices and subsystems in a controlled manner, configuring, operating O(1000) devices and tuning their operational settings using iterative optimization algorithms. Device interfaces must be extensible to accommodate yet unanticipated functionalities. The framework implements a template for procedure specific graphical interfaces to access device specific information such as monitoring data. Procedures interact with physical devices through proxy software components that implement one of the following interfaces: (1) state-less or (2) state-driven device interface. Components can extend these device interfaces following an object-oriented single inheritance scheme to provide augmented, device-specific interfaces. As only two basic device interfaces need to be defined at an early project stage, devices can be integrated gradually as commissioning progresses. We present the architecture and design of ProShell and explain the programming model by giving the simple example of the ion source spectrum analysis procedure.  
poster icon Poster MOPMN005 [0.948 MB]