An implementation of the PC-based control system
at KEK 12GeV Proton Synchrotron Complex.
J. Kishiro, E.Kadokura, H.Nakagawa, K.Nigorikawa and Y.Yano
High-Energy Accelerator Research Organization, KEK, JapanAbstract   Throughout the twenty history of the KEK

12GeV
proton synchrotron (PS), the accelerator control system
has been replaced twice, motivated by the development of
the computer and interface hardware technologies. The
third generation of the PC-based new control system is
now implementing and aiming to replace the secondgeneration based on the VME/MPA system. A detail ofthe new system configuration and hardware interface andsoftware for this new system are described in this article.

This VME/MAP system is still the main components ofthe current PS control system. However, some of thehardware or the MAP components become old anddifficult to maintain. And also the industry has stopped tosupply the touch-panel hardware.

1. CURRENT SYSTEMThe KEK 12GeV proton synchrotron complex has
been organized in 1968. The accelerator control system
was designed based on mainly a manual control, becauseof a poor environment of the computer world andinterface hardware. A small computer is installed onlyfor recording the operational data.
The second generation of the accelerator control system
had started to implement so as to improve the architectureof the machine control based on mainly the computer in1985. The system configuration was a distributed VME
system both for hardware interface and computers, andthose were connected through a MAP network. The VME
was an invention of the new hardware interface and fitted
to make a distributed system. To realize the distributedsystem, we developed an environment named “OBJP”[1]which contains the PASCAL pre-processor, networkserver and some support programs. The network aroundthe VME system was taken by implementing the MAP
network, which had the possibility to transmit either thedigital data or the analogue signal. Beside the digitalcommand and data transfer through the network, CATV
video signals or a computer graphics signals are shared as
the control information transfer. By this sense, the MAP
was the most reliable network capable to transfer bothkinds of signals on a single line.
The system configuration was a distributed computer
system. Some VME computers were installed in thedistributed VME crate, which performed as an I/O server.
A programming server computer was placed near thecontrol room for control software developments, and thesoftware programs were down loaded into the distributed
computers from that. The control presentation panels weredistributed around the main console desk and the operator
interfaces were made by the touch-panel hardware. The
touch-panel was a layer of the server program launcher
and the hierarchy of the layer was carefully designed byclustering the machine device concerned.

Figure 1. The main control console at KEK PS.
The implementation of the third generation of the PScontrol system had started in 1994 for avoiding these
difficulties and motivated by the development of thecomputer world. The main part of the current system isstill VME. However, some part of that is now replacing
by the PC-based new system. The PC system has two
kind of connections, PLC system for power supply
control and fast data acquisition system. The concept
view of the current system configuration is depicted inFigure 2.

Figure 2. The current system configuration.

2. PC-BASED NEW SYSTEM
For the third generation of the accelerator control
system at KEK PS, PC-based system is chosen. Theconsideration to chose the system were as follows:
The control or the data presentation panel ispossible to develop not by the control people but by
the operator or the user themselves. The accelerator
components of the PS have so long history that it
was difficult to implement the know-how, which isstrongly dedicated to the equipment, into the panelby the people without concerning the devices.
The control and data are classified into two types,slow and fast. The magnet power supply control isclassified slow and unified by taking a single
network protocol. The data acquisition is classified
fast and now making the unification according to theavailable network protocol.
The control or the application development should beprovided by user friendly environment. And GUI builder
software needs to be implemented for the people who
dose not have sufficient knowledge about the softwaredevelopment. The MS-WindowsNT is implemented
because that has a lot of application software suitable toequipment control and data presentation. And Active-Xcontrol provides so simple procedure to build up thecontrol and presentation panel by employing Visual Basic,
Delphi and Visual C++ etc. The panel developmentenvironment is basically the drag and put the Active-X
component on the panel and edits the properties of that.
And also the user procedure is related to the presentation
software or the API functions dedicated directly to thehardware. By this environment, software development iseasy to carry out without knowing any detail of the coding
and implementation of the hardware.

network having the transfer rate of 2Mbps. Figure 3
shows the fundamental layout of the PLC system.

Figure 3. The PLC system configuration.
The IO access to the PLC module is written by theSCADA soft and which provides some kind of DLLs forthe user application program. The application or thepresentation panel software are developed by using thecommercial software InTouch, in which the IO access to
the PLC modules and packing those access program areautomatically performed.
The control and presentation panels are easy to develop
by dragging and putting the components on the frame.
And the event procedure of each component is achievedby relating it to the stored TAG, which is the packed IO
access described above. Figure 4 shows the typical PLC
control panel on the main console desk.

2-1. Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) System.
The control modules of the magnet power supply for thebeam transport line, between 40MeV LINAC and500MeV booster ring, and for the connection line of two
LINAC tanks are mainly replaced by employing the
programmable logic controller (PLC)[2]. The magnet
control does not need fast control but all the magnet
control have the same procedure, like analogue/digitalcommand/data to set or to read the output current andsome sort of status. So that it is easy to unify the control
procedure for the magnet control.
The PLC for the magnet control are the DAC, ADC andDIO modules. Digital Analogue Converter module is usedfor setting the current. Analogue Digital Converter
modules is for read out the current. Digital In/Out
modules are employing for setting some commands to thepower supply such as On/Off, Reset etc., and some otherstatus bits are read into it.
The PLC are installed into the distributed chassises andthe chassises are connected each other by the commercial
network named SYSNET, which is the optical fiber

Figure 4.

PLC control panel.

The current assembling of the PLC modules is notproviding the one to one correspondences to the power
supply. For a power supply, DAC, ADC and DIO modules
need to be installed. We are now developing a special

dedicated PLC module for the power supply control. A
single PLC module will be provided to a single power
supply control.
2-2.

shown in figure 6.

Fast data acquisition system.

The other PC-based system is used for fast dataacquisition. It needs to be acquired and logged not only
the operational data of the accelerator equipment but also
some beam related data to examine the machine physicalcondition. The operational data are still taken by VME.
The PC-based system is providing mainly for the physicaldata acquisition, such as betatron tune meter andextraction kicker monitor etc.
The system is consisting of new developed modules,
named WE[3]. The WE has a lot of modules such as
DIO, DAC and digitizer etc., and all of those are installed
in a powered chassis. The chassises are connected throughan optical fiber network, WE-NET, which is designed tohave the capability of 250Mbps data transfer. The
attractive feature of this system is that the driver softwarefor each module is already implemented in the module
itself. And some kind of presentation panel is also
implemented in it. The system provides plug and playarchitecture so that these driver and presentation panel
software are automatically read out in the control system
when the module is put into the chassis (figure 5).

Figure 6. Tune meter control panel.
The other example of the WE system is the fast beam
extraction kicker monitor shown in figure 7.

Figure 7. The control panelof the extraction kicker monitor.
The high performance of the WE-NET and datacompression improve the refresh rate of the measurement,
about five measurements in a second.
Now, the replacement of the KEK PS control system byPC-based system is now successfully undergoing. And
full replacement including data base will be foreseen.
REFERENCES

Figure 5.

Fast data acquisition system.

The WE-control is a stand alone control system, which
automatically recognizes the modules installed in thesystem and displays the control panel stored in themodule on the console and also enables operator to accessthe module. In addition to that, application programinterface (API) library is supplied and provides the accessmethod directly to the module concerned.
The data in the WE module is automatically compressedso that it reduces the network traffics.
The first prototype of WE is installed for betatronoscillation monitor, in which white noise rf kicker is used
to excite the transverse oscillation for the beam andspontaneous beam position is detected by the beam
position monitor pick up[4]. The control and presentation
panel was developed by MS-Delphi using the WE API, as[1] H.Nakagawa, “A new programming method for multitask multi-computer system with local area network
OBJP” KEK Report 90-20.
H.nakagawa et.al. “A program development tool for
KEK VME-MAP control system”, KEK Preprint 91168[2] E.Kadokura et.al., “The improvement of the KEK PS
control system ”, Proc. of IWCSMSA96, Tuskuba,Japan 1996
[3] Y.Yamaguchi et.al., “A new PC-based plug and play
instruments and its application to a betatron oscillationmonitor”, Proc. of 10th International Sympo. on
DEVELOPMENT IN DIGITAL MEASURING
INSTRUMENTATION, Naples, Italy, 1998.
[4] J.Kishiro et.al., “A new high performance dataacquisition system and application to a betatronoscillation monitor”, Proc. of ICALEPS 1997, Begin,
China