A real-time current driving control system for the TJ-II coils

Since the start of plasma operation in the TJ-II stellarator, the required values of DC currents that are fed to its different coil sets have been controlled to high precision along the complete discharge flat-top. As a result each current configuration produced a highly stable magnetic-field configuration. ly, the configurational flexibility of the TJ-II has been broadened by the commissioning of a new mode of operation that allows magnetic configurations to be varied dynamically during the discharge flat-top. In order to achieve this, new hardware and software features have been added to the TJ-II Control System. These new features may also provide new strategies for feedback control in accordance with parameters measured in one or more diagnostics. In this new set-up, coil current profiles are generated and controlled to millisecond timescales by a system based on VMEbus and OS9 real-time operating system. A new communication middleware architecture called XML-based Messages Distribution Service (X-MDS) has been designed to exchange XML-based data with calling clients. Furthermore, with this software, a fully functional Java application for supervision and for current profiles settings has been developed. aper provides a detailed description of the complete TJ-II real-time current-profile control system and results obtained during its operation.