Fast feedback control for plasma positioning with a PCI hybrid DSP/FPGA board

The need to control in real-time the plasma parameters in fusion devices leads to the development of algorithms requiring intensive computation and providing results on a few hundred microseconds. The present work's objective was the implementation of the current filaments method (CF) to model in real-time the ISTTOK plasma shape and position. The hardware used was the on site developed PCI-TR-256 hardware configurable module, which includes the latest technology in DSP and FPGA. The algorithm estimates the position of the plasma column and generates the control signals for the vertical magnetic field actuators. The main advantage of this system is to provide a digital approach to feedback plasma position control with similar cycle times to those of analog systems but allowing flexible, user defined, algorithms.