Continuous and Real-Time Data Acquisition Embedded System for EAST

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) is planned to run 1000 s plasma discharges in the near future. In this steady-state operation, the data acquisition system (DAS) will be required to continuously acquire diagnostic signals, transfer diagnostic data from the digitizer front-end to the data servers in order that the data is retrieved by the experimenters in real-time. Another disadvantage is that current data acquisition systems consist of many devices which are connected through various cables to provide the requested functionality. A study has been launched to identify the limitation of the present acquisition system with respect to long pulse operation. During the study, a new data acquisition system based on Field programmable gate array (FPGA) and Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) technologies has been developed in order to realise the continuous data acquisition and real-time data transmission during a long-pulse discharge. This device offers a flexible, portable, multi-channels, continuous simultaneous signal acquisition, with programmable gain and isolation amplifiers. This paper will describe the new data acquisition device in detail.