Design and Performance Analysis of a Nonstandard EPICS Fast Controller

Large scientific projects present new technological challenges, such as the distributed control over a communication network. In particular, the middleware Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is the most extended communication standard in particle accelerators. The integration of modern control architectures in these EPICS networks is becoming common, as for example for the PXI/PXIe and xTCA hardware alternatives. In this paper, a different integration procedure for PXI/PXIe real-time controllers from National Instruments is proposed, using LabVIEW as the design tool. This methodology is considered and its performance is analyzed by means of a set of laboratory experiments. This control architecture is proposed for achieving the implementation requirements of fast controllers, which need an important amount of computational power and signal processing capability, with a tight real-time demand. The present paper studies the advantages and drawbacks of this methodology and presents its comprehensive evaluation by means of a laboratory test bench, designed for the application of systematic tests. These tests compare the proposed fast controller performance with a similar system implemented using an standard EPICS IOC provided by the CODAC system.