ISTTOK plasma control with the tomography diagnostic

The presently available processing power in generic processing units (GPU) combined with state-of-the-art programmable logic devices enables the implementation of complex algorithms for plasma diagnostics in a real-time scenario.A tomography diagnostic based on three linear pin-hole cameras each with eight lines of sight has been developed for the ISTTOK tokamak. The plasma emissivity in a poloidal cross-section is computed locally on a sub-millisecond time scale, using a variant of the Fourier–Bessel algorithm. The output signals are then used for active plasma position control.The data acquisition and reconstruction system is based on ATCA technology and consists of one acquisition board with integrated FPGA capabilities and a dual-core Intel module running RTAI Linux.In this paper, the tomographic algorithm and some preliminary results of the real-time plasma position control are presented with a performance benchmarking against other available positioning diagnostics. The algorithm has shown to be accurate and the system has successfully controlled the plasma position during a plasma current reversal.