Fusion Engineering and Design 81 (2006) 17651770

First operation of RFX-mod real-time control system

M. Cavinato, A. Luchetta , G. Manduchi, G. Marchiori, C. Taliercio
Consorzio RFX, Euratom-ENEA Association, Corso Stati Uniti 4, Padova 35127, Italy
Available online 9 May 2006

Abstract
A new distributed, computer-based system has been developed to handle the real-time requirements of the RFX-mod machine
control. The system is currently in use during the experiment activity. As it allows a large variety of options in terms of real-time
analysis and control schemes, its commissioning has been carried out in three phases: equilibrium control, toroidal field control,
and MHD mode control. The paper describes briefly the system architecture with reference to the key feature of the real-time
system implementation and comments on the advantages and limits of the design choices with reference to the current system
operation. Later on, the main algorithms implemented in the system are presented and the first operation with plasma is described.
It finally reports the results achieved during operation and discusses some guidelines for possible future improvement.
2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Real-time control; Feedback control; Distributed systems; Digital system

1. Introduction
Fusion experiments need complex real-time systems to control the plasma discharge and to achieve
increased performance [1,2]. In general, they use feedback loops based on extensive sets of electromagnetic measurements to control plasma current, position
and shape. Advanced control schemes have also been
recently introduced in tokamaks, based on diagnostics measurements, to control current density, profile
and MHD mode instabilities [3]. Latency time values
are decreasing rapidly, whereas computational requirements are steadily increasing. Starting from latency
Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 049 8295043;
fax: +39 049 78700718.
E-mail address: adriano.luchetta@igi.cnr.it (A. Luchetta).

0920-3796/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2006.04.034

time values of tens of ms for plasma position and shape

control [4], the requirements for the new applications
are now in the range of hundreds to tens of s [5].
Until 1999 RFX was not a suitable device for
plasma feedback control by external magnetic field, as
it had a stabilizing shell with time constant for vertical
field penetration much higher than the plasma duration (400 ms versus 200 ms). The first digital system
for feedback control in RFX was built in 1997 aimed
at cancelling the field errors at the shell vertical gaps.
In the years 20012004 crucial machine modifications were carried out to enhance plasma controllability
(the upgraded experiment is referred to as RFX-mod).
The shell time constant was reduced to 50 ms, value
that guarantees the passive stability control of the discharge in the first tens of ms and allows also active
plasma position control; the toroidal power supply sys-

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A real-time network provides system integration.

The experience gained in the previous generation of
RFX real-time systems was helpful to define a set of
basic features at system, hardware and software levels.
At system level main features are:

Fig. 1. Real time system layout.

tem was rebuilt to allow independent feeding of the

twelve toroidal sectors and, thus, the control of the nonaxisymmetric m = 0 components of the toroidal field;
finally, to control the m = 1 MHD modes, 192 active
saddle coils were mounted to fully cover the stabilizing shell [6]. As the active coils are arranged in four
toroidal arrays (each array comprising 48 coils) located
at progressive poloidal angles (0, /2, , 3/2 rad), a
large number of m = 1 MHD modes can be addressed
by the system (n = 2324).
2. Key features of real-time system
To achieve the RFX-mod control requirements a
new hardware and software infrastructure has been
realized. Fig. 1 shows the layout of the RFX-mod distributed real-time system. It includes several nodes,
each one acting as either pre-processing or control
node. The former executes real-time data analysis
to evaluate intermediate plasma parameters, such as
plasma position or 2D spatial harmonic analysis on
magnetic field, the latter implements the control loops
and generates the control references. A typical control
loop is, thus, executed in a two-stage pipeline, the first
stage being computed by the pre-processing node, the
second one by one or more control nodes. Each node
consists of one VME64 crate hosting one 500 MHz
PowerPC-based single board computer (SBC) suitable for computing-intensive applications. Commercial analogue and digital I/O boards are also hosted
in the crate, depending on the node role and configuration.

Implementation of a single, integrated, distributed

system delivering all needed control functions.
Real-time communication uses the UDP protocol
on 100 Mbit/s Ethernet. Data are exchanged synchronously once per control cycle. Loss of data packets is monitored, but retransmission is avoided. Communication has been operating, so far, on a switched
Ethernet segment isolated from other LANs and no
packet loss has ever been detected. The system is
designed to tolerate the possible loss of a maximum
number of contiguous packets without loss of control. When the allowed maximum number is reached,
the pulse is aborted.
System design carried out with reference to the
response time values of the control actuators.
As for the hardware the main features are:
Use of commodity equipment; custom developments
were considered only when commercial off-theshelf electronics could not fulfil system requirements.
Use of consolidated, long life cycle hardware platforms. Enclosures with high-level engineering are
still necessary in embedded computing applications
to provide standard power supply distribution, cooling and system handling; in control applications.
VME64 is a platform that offers established and
evolving technology at the same time.
Use of data transfer systems alternative to VMEbus
in inter-module data exchange to reduce data transfer
latency. To speed up data readout from ADC modules into the SBC memory, Front Panel Data Port (up
to 160 MB/s) has been used. This has been a compromise waiting for products exploiting standardized
technologies at system level such as 2eSST VME
[7].
Decoupling among front-end (ADC/DAC), computation (CPU) and communication electronics.
This approach helps keeping pace with the evolution of technology. In fact, to our experience,
ADC/DACs evolve slowly during the experiment
life, whereas processors and communication elec-

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Table 1
Real time control algorithms
Control area

Power supply type

No.

Power rate

Response
time (ms)

Control algorithm

Control
variable

Max latency
time (ms)

Equilibrium

20

16 kA
1.5 kV

1.66

Plasma position control

Equiflux shell control

Hp
H

1.6

MHD modes

192

400 A
650 V

0.1

Resistive wall mode stabilization

Tearing mode control
Selective virtual shell

brm=1,n
brm=1,n
brm,n

0.3

Toroidal field

12

6 kA
3 kV

0.7

Control of axisymmetric toroidal field at the wall

Rotating perturbation
Control of mode wall locking toroidal position
MHD m = 0 mode control

b (a)
b (a)

b0,n

0.7

tronics improve dramatically. The possibility to

upgrade the system by updating only the SBC and/or
the communication infrastructure is considered very
important.
The main software features are:
Decoupling between system and applicationspecific code. System code provides general services, such as data flow handling, whereas separate,
dedicated pieces of code encapsulate applicationspecific details.
Implementation of a configurable, modular software
framework implementing the system code. As the
framework is reused in all nodes (MVME5110 with
WindRiver VxWorks OS), the optimization process is very efficient [8]. The framework can be
ported with little effort to other real-time operating
systems as it is loosely hooked into the operating
system.

3.1. Plasma equilibrium

The passive reaction of the conducting shell provides plasma equilibrium in the first tens of ms of the
discharge, whereas in the proceeding the field diffusion and the resulting increasing horizontal plasma shift
must be counteracted actively.
Two alternative algorithms implement the equilibrium control. The plasma position control acts on the
horizontal position Hp of the centre of the plasma section, defined as the centre of the outermost closed flux
surface inside the first wall. The equiux control modifies the poloidal flux distribution so as to make
the shell surface coincide with a flux surface. Even
though plasma equilibrium is a well-experienced control scheme, it is worth pointing out that RFX-mod is
the first Reversed Field Pinch device to operate with
full active feedback control of plasma equilibrium.
3.2. MHD mode control

3. Control algorithms
The system provides control functions in three
experiment areas: plasma equilibrium, MHD modes,
and toroidal field. For each area one or multiple control algorithms have been developed. Table 1 summarizes the areas, the main parameters of the actuating power amplifiers, the control algorithms with
the control variables, and maximum permitted latency
times.

Active MHD mode control aims at controlling the

spatial harmonic structure of the radial component of
magnetic field brm,n , where m and n are the poloidal and
toroidal orders, respectively [9].
Various control schemes have been implemented to
interact with MHD modes. The resistive wall mode
(RWM) stabilization aims at avoiding the growth of
unstable, non-resonant external modes (due to the resistive wall) up to the level of disrupting the discharge.
Growth times of the RFX-mod RWM are in the range

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of some tens of ms. Evidence of RWM growth in RFXmod has been detected, even though the limited plasma
duration in the pulses carried out so far (up to 120 ms)
does not allow to observe a complete phenomenology.
The m = 1 Tearing Mode Control operates by forcing
selected tearing modes to the purpose to either cancel,
seed or drag in slow toroidal rotation corresponding
plasma modes. The Selective Virtual Shell cancels all
modes, but selected ones.
3.3. Toroidal eld control
The control of the toroidal field is achieved modulating the currents on the twelve toroidal sectors. It
has three different uses: control of the axisymmetric
reversal toroidal field at the wall, control of the toroidal
position of the mode wall locking (MWL), control of
the m = 0 MHD toroidal field modes. The former can
either impose the values of reversal field at the wall or
the ratio between the toroidal field at the wall and the
average toroidal field across the plasma section.
The open loop generation of a rotating perturbation is the scheme used in RFX, to control the MWL
toroidal position [10]. This latter has also been controlled imposing an external toroidal perturbation at a
fixed angle difference from the MWL position (about
/2 rad), so as to maximize the drag torque.
As the actuators of the m = 0 Mode Control are the
12 toroidal field amplifiers, only the modes with m = 0
and n < 6 can be controlled.

The framework has been installed in a couple of

communicating nodes, equipped with a rich set of I/O
modules, and a detailed measurement campaign has
been executed to characterize the system time performances versus number of input/output channels and
data communication packet size. The measurements
have been used to predict the latency time values of the
various control applications. It has to be pointed out
that the system turned out to be suitable even for distributed control applications with latency time values
below some tens of s.
The commissioning with plasma has been scheduled
in three different campaigns: equilibrium, toroidal eld
and MHD mode control. This plan allows addressing
one scientific goal at a time and permits to commission
the real-time system progressively.
4.1. Equilibrium control
The application was designed to operate at a sampling rate of about 1 kHz, compatible with the actuator
response time [11].
The plasma position algorithm computes the centre
of the plasma column using the poloidal flux differences  obtained by difference on integrated toroidal
voltage loop signals. The measure accuracy proved to
be inadequate. To enhance it, it was necessary to integrate digitally the analogue flux derivative differences,
increasing the sampling frequency up to 5 kHz. For this
reason the equilibrium control is currently operating
faster than expected.

4. Operation with plasma

4.2. Toroidal eld control

Prior to the system commissioning, the software

framework has been debugged and optimized for execution. Data transfer latency has been minimized
both inside one node and between nodes. Some
computational-intensive algorithms, such as 2D spatial Fourier analysis and matrix multiplication, have
been coded to exploit the processor vector architecture
(AltiVec) that allows up to four floating-point operations simultaneously. During the system design phase,
the use of the AltiVec optimization was not encouraged as it leads to poorly portable code. As a matter of
fact, in the system development to avoid exceeding the
target real-time constraints, more and more functions
have been optimised for vector execution.

Rotating perturbations of toroidal magnetic field

have been produced to test the capability of the system
to drag into toroidal rotation the MWL. In addition
to harmonic waveforms, also square and triangular
waveforms have been tested. The rotation has been
induced with three different strategies in ascending
order of complexity: pre-programmed rotating perturbation, rotating perturbation with either initial or continuous evaluation of MWL toroidal position. The first
operation was useful to tune the system and to identify the most effective perturbation waveforms. In this
strategy the perturbation is launched just after the current start-up and the interaction between perturbation
and MWL occurs when the perturbation approaches

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Fig. 2. Rotation of MWL in pulse 16320. Upper panel: plasma current; lower panel: toroidal phases of MWL and dragging rotating perturbation
(continuous).

the MWL position. In the second strategy the perturbation is started in proximity of the MWL position.
The last strategy requires the continuous computation
of the mode wall toroidal position and adjustment of
the phase of the toroidal perturbation around a fixed
angle (about /2) from the MWL.
Fig. 2 shows the results obtained in pulse #16320,
executed with continuous evaluation of MWL position,
in which the MWL flips between two positions (290
and 105 ). Despite the efforts, the control cannot drive
continuous rotation, due to the high level of radial error
field in the magnetic structure, especially at the poloidal
gap. Better results are expected controlling the radial
error field by the MHD mode system.
4.3. MHD mode control
The original design envisaged operating only on a
limited number of MHD modes requiring transmitting
in real time only some hundred bytes. After discussions, to allow maximum flexibility, it was decided to
transmit all the computed components of the 2D FFT.
This would require about 200 s, a too large value to
maintain the target latency time (300 s). An algorithm
for data compression was, thus, implemented allowing
the information transmission by less than 300 bytes
(more than 60% of compression rate). The algorithm
exploits various factors, among which the 12-bit sam-

pling of the ADC and the range between the maximum

and the minimum amplitudes of modes. It cannot avoid
information loss, but this is contained in about 2% of
the maximum possible mode amplitude, a value that is
considered tolerable for this application.
Commissioning of the MHD mode control is scheduled for July 2005.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the European Communities under the contract of Association between
EURATOM/ENEA. The views and opinions expressed
herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European
Commission.
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