LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center’s (LANSCE) Accelerator Operations and Technology division group executed a project that implemented a new analog front-end card (AFE) for their wire scanner’s Data Acquisition (DAQ) system. The AFE accommodates the signal amplification and noise reduction needed to acquire essential measurement data for beam diagnostics for the LANSCE accelerator. Wire Scanners are electro-mechanical beam interceptive devices that provide cross-sectional beam profile measurement data fitted to a Gaussian distribution that provides beam shape and position information. The beam operators use the beam shape and position information to adjust parameters such as acceleration, steering and focus on delivering an optimized beam to all targets. The project implemented software and hardware that eliminated the dependency on legacy systems and consolidated various AFE designs for diagnostics systems into a single design with 11 gain settings ranging from 100 nA to 40 mA at 10 V full scale to accommodate future applications on other diagnostic systems.
