Control and Data Acquisition System upgrade in RFX-mod2

RFX-mod2, currently under construction at Consorzio RFX, is an evolution of the former RFX-mod experiment, with an improved shell and a larger set of electromagnetic sensors. RFX-mod2 represents a highly configurable device for fusion research as it can implement both Reversed Field Pinch and Tokamak magnetic configurations. The large set of electromagnetic sensors and coil actuators, including 192 saddle coils, allows exploring a wide range of plasma control schemas, but at the same time poses a challenge for its Control and Data Acquisition System (CODAS). RFX-mod2 CODAS is required to provide the high-speed acquisition of a large set of signals and their inclusion in the Plasma Control System that must provide a sub-millisecond response to plasma instabilities. While brand new solutions are provided for the acquisition of the electromagnetic signals, involving Zynq-based ADC devices, other parts of the CODAS system have been retained from the former RFX-mod CODAS. Nevertheless, even for the retained components, technology updates have been introduced such as the replacement of embedded cPCI computers with solutions based on PCIe bridges and the replacement of the former SCADA system for plant control. The paper presents the solutions adopted in the new RFX-mod2 CODAS, belonging to three main categories: 1) Plasma Real-Time control, including both hardware solutions based on Zynq and the integration of data acquisition and real-time frameworks for its software configuration. For this purpose, MDSplus and MARTe2, two frameworks for data acquisition and real-time control, respectively, widely used in the fusion community have been used. 2) Data acquisition, including upgrades performed to the former cPCI-based systems and new ad-hoc solutions based on RedPitaya 3) Plant supervision, carried out in WinCC-OA and integrated with the data acquisition system via a new WinCC-OA database plugin.