A Modular Optical Firing Interface for CERN’s Generic Power Converter Control Platform
Matteo Di Cosmo, Thomas Gaime, Benjamin Todd · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2019
The power converters group at CERN has developed a third generic converter controller (FGC3) and regulation platform (RegFGC3), capable of controlling any of CERN’s power converters. This platform provides electrical connections to the low-level control elements of power converters, and in some cases a galvanic isolation is required between the converter controller output, and the power converter under control. To meet these requirements, a generic modular optical firing platform has been developed, which converts the electrical firing pulses from the RegFGC3 and FGC3 platforms into optical drive signals. Designed to be fully scalable, this platform provides various protection mechanisms to verify the integrity of the firing information. For example, checking for illegal firing states, dead-time, and drive errors. This paper describes the modular optical firing interface, the basic principles, and the configurations which are in use, or are planned to be used at CERN.