AGPS User Manual

V 0.1
Changelog

Date Version Author Description

28th June 2021 0.1 Sofian Jafar Initial draft.
1 Table of Contents
1 Table of Contents.................................................................................................................................................. 3
2 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Principle of Operation................................................................................................................................... 4
2.2 Parts of The System ...................................................................................................................................... 4
3 System Design ...................................................................................................................................................... 5
3.1 TECHNIX Power Supplies............................................................................................................................... 5
3.2 SESAME Control Electronics 2 (SCE2) ............................................................................................................ 6
3.2.1 Features ................................................................................................................................................... 6
3.2.2 Firmware Structure .................................................................................................................................. 7
4 Control Interfaces ................................................................................................................................................. 9
5 Setup .................................................................................................................................................................... 9
5.1 Control Setup ............................................................................................................................................... 9
5.2 Parameter Setup .........................................................................................................................................10
2 Introduction
This manual is to describe the operation of the Auxiliary Gun Power Supply (AGPS) for the M22 Microtron at SESAME.

2.1 Principle of Operation

The M22 Microtron at SESAME generates Electrons by means of heating up a special crystal of Lanthanum Hexaboride
(LaB6) to 1500° C, also called the Main Gun or Cathode.

This Gun is heated up by Electron bombardment from an auxiliary electron gun, hence the Auxiliary Gun and its power
supply.

The AGPS regulates the amount of heat at the Main Gun by controlling the amount of electrons that are accelerated
towards it and eventually transferring all kinetic energy they gain while accelerating towards it in an electric field
generated by the High Voltage source of the AGPS, see Figure 1.

Figure 1: Block diagram of the Cathode and Auxiliary Gun in the M22 Microtron.

2.2 Parts of The System

The AGPS is made up for three parts:

1. The High Voltage Power Supply (3kV/60mA).

2. Filament Power Supply (20V/15A).
3. SESAME Control Electronics 2 (SCE2).

The 2 power supplies are controlled using the SCE2 to achieve the requires operation by analog and digital signals.

The regulation, control and interfacing is all performed by the SCE2 which can be controlled over USB and/or Ethernet.
3 System Design
The AGPS is made of three parts as discussed earlier, two power supplies provided by TECHNIX from France and the
control electronics that controls all aspects of the afore mentioned power supplies to generate the Auxiliary Gun Current
as required.

Figure 2: AGPS System Overview

3.1 TECHNIX Power Supplies

The two power supplies used in the AGPS are a special order from TECHNIX, one is used to generate the High Voltage and
the other is a Filament heater low voltage current source. Here are their model numbers:

 SR20V-300W 20V/15A Filament Current Source

 SR3KV-300W 3kV/60mA High Voltage Source

These two power supplies are provided with a cable to connect between them shown in the picture below:
 Figure 3: TECHNIX Power Supplies Front View

ADD PICTURE

These power supplies can be controlled with an analog interface that utilizes a 10V signal to set and read the current and
voltage settings and measurements in the power supply itself along with some digital I/O for control signals. This interface
is used to interact with the power supplies from the SCE2.

The Control cables connected between the Power Supplies and the SCE2 cannot be swapped, each cable must be
connected to its correct location, otherwise this can risk damage to the system.

Show correct cable connection

3.2 SESAME Control Electronics 2 (SCE2)

The SESAME Control Electronics is a power supply control system built at SESAME to be used for multiple applications in
the power supplies domain. The first one is the AGPS system.

3.2.1 Features
The SCE2 system is made up of 3 cards:

1. SCE2-tCC (test Control Card)

 Using a 300MHz m7 Arm Microcontroller.
 USB and Ethernet interfaces.
 12 channels of 16bit ADCs (±12V), individually samples at 10 ksmps.
 On board thermal measurement over I2C.
 2 status indicating LEDS.
2. SCE2-PS (Power Supply)
 Generating all the required Voltage rails: Digital: 5V, 3.3V; Analog: ±14V, ± 5V, 5V and 3.3V
 Power Good detection circuit.
 Status indicating LED for each voltage rail.
3. SCE2-AGPS
This board is installed in a slot called SCE2-Daughter, it can be changed and adapted based on the use case, for
the AGPS a special card was design to be able to cope with the requirements
 Optical Isolation for all I/O interfacing with the power supplies.
  Sample and Hold circuit used for sampling the gun current signal, this can be trigged with an external trigger.
 4 channels of 16bit DACs, each outputting 0-12.5V. Controlled using tCC board over SPI.
 On board thermal measurement over I2C.

SCE2 is more than capable for the AGPS application requirements.

3.2.2 Firmware Structure

The firmware is based on FreeRTOS real-time operating system version 202012.00 LTS.

The Ethernet stack is FreeRTOS-TCP which makes it easy to integrate into the operating system.

Operation is divided between multiple tasks, each task taking control of a part of the system, with the “Machine” task
being the main task in control of the system.

Here is a list of the tasks and what each of them does:

Task Name Priority Description

IDLE 0 FreeRTOS - System is IDLE and waiting for something to happen

[A] USB Info 1 System info printed every second on USB serial link

[A] USB CLI 1 Command Line Interface over USB serial link

[A] Log Dump 2 Handles the transfer of the postmortem log over TCP

[A] HV 3 Handles the state of the High Voltage Power Supply

[A] FIL 3 Handles the State of the Filament Power Supply

[A] Machine 4 The Main task responsible for the overall state of the Power Supply

[A] TCP CLI 5 Command Line Interface over TCP

[A] TCP DSTREAM 6 Datastream Interface over TCP

[A] UDP DSTREAM 6 Datastream Interface over UDP

[A] Regulator 7 The regulation loop that controls the driving signal of the power supply

[A] Supervisor 8 Monitoring all values and asserting interlocks and resetting them

[A] ADC Logger 9 Postmortem logging

Tmr Svc 10 FreeRTOS - Timer

IP-task 11 FreeRTOS-TCP stack task

[A] LED2 12 Controlling the toggling times of LED1 on the front panel

[A] LED1 12 Controlling the toggling times of LED2on the front panel

EMAC 12 FreeRTOS-TCP EMAC task

Notes:

 Low priority number means lower priority.

 Tasks that start with “[A]” are non FreeRTOS tasks, meaning they are specific to this application.
 The mode of operation for FreeRTOS is preemptive.
3.2.2.1 State Machine
The Task “[A] Machine” is responsible for tracking and handling the state machine of the system, managing the other
functional tasks and their current mode of operation. The State Machine is described in Figure 4.

Figure 4: AGPS State Machine

At power up the system starts at an undefined state, then goes through an automatic reset, if no interlocks are present
the system will be ready to operate.

3.2.2.2 Regulation Loop

The system has two different regulation loops that are slightly different, one works in Standby mode with a rate of 100Hz
and the other is for Trig-On mode and operates at the external trigger rate which is usually 1Hz. The regulation is built
around a discreet Proportional-Integral control loop. Both Proportional and Integral gains can be changed while the
system is in operation.

Figure 5: Simplified PI control loop

The loop is built using a simple PI controller as the system has no source of rapid disturbances, the most prominent effect
is thermal which is usually slow and PI control scheme is more than capable of taking control. The system can be seen in
Figure 5 and Figure 6.
 Figure 6: Detailed Control Loop

The labels given to the lines in Figure 6 are the register and parameters names that can be read to see the status of the
regulation loop while in operation. Names that end with “_R“ indicate registers and “_P” indicate parameters.

The chosen scheme minimizes wind-up effects, as the output never exceeds the set limits. The scheme also integrates
the limit on rate of change of the Filament Current.

The system integrates two very similar regulation loops with different Kp and Ki values. One is for regulating at Standby
and the other is for regulating in Trig-On mode. This provides the possibility of tuning the system more precisely.

3.2.2.3 Supervisor
The Supervisor task is responsible for monitoring all states and value and making sure the system works in the safest
possible way, measured values are compared against limits to initiate interlocks and inform the system of any possible
problem.

3.2.2.4 Machine
The Machine task is the main task that controls the current state of the system, all commands are sent to the other tasks
from the Machine task.

4 Control Interfaces
The AGPS power supply can be controlled remotely over different interfaces:

 USB Serial Port Emulator command console, vie front panel Micro-USB connector.
 TCP based command console.
 TCP Datastream, this is a binary data transmission protocol, check Interface_Manual.pdf document.
 UDP Datastream, same as TCP Datastream, this is faster but less reliable.

All links are available simultaneously but only one interface can have write access on the system, this insures that no
conflicts can happen.

5 Setup
The AGPS system requires to be initially setup to work as intended.

5.1 Control Setup

When the system is first installed it needs to be properly setup for all interfaces to function properly, especially the
Ethernet interface.

When power is applied on the control part of the system and an Ethernet cable is plugged into the Ethernet port the
system looks for a DHCP server to setup the IP address. If a DHCP server is found the AGPS takes an IP and that becomes
the IP over which the system can be interfaced. This IP can be read using the USB console interface, by sending a carriage
return the screen starts printing statistics, one of which is the IP the system has taken.

All network settings can be configured using the USB console interface, consult with the Interfaces_Manual.pdf document
for more details.

Once the Ethernet is properly setup the controller needs to be reset in order for the settings to take effect.
5.2 Parameter Setup
All parameters need to be setup to work with the system as intended, these parameters are responsible for the protection
of the system as well, so great care must be taken when doing this step.

Consult the Interface_Manual.pdf for more details.