Digital Low-Level RF Conctrols for Future Superconducting Linear Colliders

The requirements for RF Control Systems of Superconducting Linear Colliders are not only defined in terms of the quality of field control but also with respect to operability, availability, and maintainability of the RF System, and the interfaces to other subsystems. The field control of the vector-sum of many cavities driven by one klystron in pulsed mode at high gradients is a challenging task since severe Lorentz force detuning, microphonics and beam induced field errors must be suppressed by several orders of magnitude. This is accomplished by a combination of local and global feedback and feedforward control. Sensors monitor individual cavity probe signals, and forward and reflected wave as well as the beam properties including beam energy and phase while actuators control the incident wave of the klystron and individual cavity resonance frequencies. The operability of a large llrf system requires a high degree of automation while the high availability requires robust algorithms, redundancy, and extremely reliable hardware. The maintenance of the llrf demands sophisticated on-line diagnostics for the llrf sub-systems to minimize downtime.