Design of DAQ System and Graphical Interface for
Beam Profile Monitor for 1.7 MV Tandem
Accelerator
Abhimaan Patil, department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, BITS-Pilani Goa Campus, Goa
J.Navas, K.Suresh, R.Govindaraj, DDSD, Material Science Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research
Abstract— The 1.7 MV tandem particle accelerator
present in the Material Science group, IGCAR,
Kalpakkam houses an oscillating wire Beam profile
monitor. Accurate Beam Profiling and current
measurements are critical aspects that influence the
success of an experiment. This paper presents the design
and evaluation of a data acquisition system for BPM
based on an oscillating Wire Scanner for a 1.7 MV
tandem accelerator. The proposed design includes an
Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC7824), a flux of the ions at that given instance. These are used to
microcontroller (Arduino Mega2560), and a USB
(USB245M) peripheral to acquire precise and real-time
data from the BPM sensor. The microcontroller processes
the acquired data and interfaces with LabVIEW for real-
time analysis and visualization. The paper details the
systematic development of the BPM system, including
sensor integration, hardware configuration, and software
implementation. Initial results demonstrate the system's
capability to provide accurate and real-time beam
position information. Furthermore, the integration with
LabVIEW provides a user-friendly and personalized
interface. The presented framework offers scalability for
broader applications in high-energy physics research.
I. INTRODUCTION
Beam Profile monitors are an important diagnostics device
in the accelerator facilities. These are used to monitor the
location and shape/size of the ion beam. These provide
information in real-time to the operator to adjust the position
and intensity of the beam which is vital for optimizing
accelerator performance and to ensure targeted beam delivery.
The subject of this paper is HVEE BPM which is installed in
the 1.7 MV Tandem accelerator of the Accelerator lab of
Material Science Group, IGCAR, Kalpakkam.
Fig.1. Principle of HVE BPM system operation
II. PRINCIPES OF BEAM OPERATIONS
A. Sensor design and Specifications
The HVEE BPM utilizes two oscillating wires to get the
profile of the ion beam. The BPM scanner head is mounted
under a 45° angle with the axis of the beamline and the two
sensing wires are electrically connected. When a wire passes
through the beam the collision of the ions with the wire
produces secondary electrons which are proportional to the
generate a magnetic field in the drive coil that pushes and pulls
a magnet Fig.1. The beam current signal is picked up at the
vane and amplified to produce the Y-signal which is the
Analog signal that provides the profile information. The
motion of this magnet is also used to generate a voltage in the
pickup coil which is used to control the oscillator. This is led
through a comparator to give μs the X-signal which is a pulse
wave and it represents the direction of the sweep. It sweeps
with constant sweep frequency and the frequency of the device
is typically 10 Hz to 25 Hz.
Fig.2. BPM Head Output profiles
B. Data Characteristic
In each sweep, the sensing wire picks up the beam current
twice. The sensor scans the X and Y profile in succession
utilizing the 2 wires to scan both the X and Y profile in one-
half cycle (X-signal High) of its oscillation and provides
another profile but with inverted coordinates in the other half
cycle (X-signal Low) as shown in Fig.2. The position of the
beam in spatial dimension has a uniform correlation in the
time domain. The Y-signal sequentially provides the X
profile, Y profile, mirrored Y profile, and mirrored X profile
over one oscillation cycle of the wire (X-signal) with a
constant time period which was found to be approximately
50ms. The X profile spans 12.5ms of the signal, and similarly,
the Y profile spans 12.5ms (50ms divided by 4 profiles). The
wire sweep of 12.5ms corresponds to the entire sweep length
of the aperture that covers 50 mm. So 1mm corresponds to 250
μs. The length of L mm on the beamline corresponds to L
times 0.25 in the time domain.
 i.e. 50 mm x p = 12.5 ms.
Therefore, p = 0.25 s/m,
And the following relationship can be established :
T(μs) = 250 x L(mm) (1)
The Y-signal output voltage ranges from 0V to 5V,
corresponding to beam current intensity. The gain for which
is set by the operator. The challenge is to extract and display
only the X and Y profiles while ignoring the mirrored profiles.
Only the profile in the positive half of the cycle is desired.
III. DEVELOPMENT OF NEW DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM
The Existing BPM setup is limited to displaying one beam
profile at a time on an Oscilloscope. This mode of operation
was primarily developed when visualizing data through an
oscilloscope was the main objective. The available data is
solely provided as visual feedback to the operator and does not
offer interactive engagement with a control system or real
parameters. The operator has to be familiar with how to
comprehend the data displayed on the oscilloscope. Still, the
operator only has the information of the rough estimate of the
beam location which creates a challenging task to accurately
adjust the position of the beam. The current method of
visualization and management is restricted and may not
represent the most cost-effective solution.
The paper proposes the use of open-source hardware like
Arduino 8-bit microcontrollers(ATmega2560).
Fig.3. Basic Block diagram of the system architecture.
A. Hardware design
Readily available and open source software Arduino has
been used for the data acquisition system from the BPM to the
Computer. An Arduino Mega 2560-based data acquisition
system is proposed with an external ADC. The design should
have at most 0.1 mm of resolution.
T (μs) = 0.1x 250 μs = 25 μs. from (1)
To achieve an adequate step of at least 0.1 mm the
designed system has to perform conversion and transmission
in less than 25us. The conversion speed of Arduino is
significantly slower than the requirement as mentioned in the
next. section. So, an external ADC (ADC7824) with 4
channels has been used.
An FTDI device is used for the USB peripheral to transmit
the data to the computer as the maximum stable transmission
speed of Arduino over Serial communication is 115,200 bits
per second which is not fast enough to transmit the required
points in a given time. The basic block diagram of the setup is
shown in Fig.3.
B. Microcontroller Firmware
A digital pulse wave (X-signal) controls the wire scanner's
motion direction. Combined with the data(Y-signal), it can be
used to separate out the mirrored profiles.
The ADC operates only when the control signal(X-signal) is
high, triggering an interrupt to start the cycle. A timer
interrupt then begins, triggering the ADC to convert
asynchronously. ADC is set to run asynchronously to record
data at precise consistent intervals. The 8-bit data and 16-bit
timestamp for the iteration are recorded. Data is encoded and
transmitted to the computer in packets of 5 bytes via USB.
This step of encoding the data helps with data loss errors and
also makes post-processing easy and smooth. The next
measurements occur at the next timer interrupt. This process
continues until the control signal(x-signal) goes low. The
cycle repeats on the next rising edge of the X-signal. An
external button is also provided to turn the system on/off.
C. Data Analysis
The conversion time of the ADC should be at least 25 μs.
But the conversion time of the internal ADC the ADC clock
is set to 16 MHz/128 = 125 KHz. Each conversion in AVR
takes 13 ADC clocks so the speed reduces to 125 KHz /13 =
9615 Hz.[3] Arduino Mega takes approximately 110 μs per
conversion. This is not sufficient. Therefore, an external 8-bit
ADC ADC7824 with a conversion time of 2.5 μs is used.
The initial testing showed that the proposed system can plot
up to 2000 points for the complete profile. The X and Y
profiles occur over only 25 milliseconds in each iteration.
This means that we are obtaining up to 1000 points for each
profile as we get X and Y profiles in each cycle as each profile
occurs for 12.5 ms. This is because, initial testing showed that
the minimum duration between each measurement is
performed 12.5 μs apart. Correspondingly from equation (1)
the resolution of each step of the proposed system is 0.05mm.
So, the maximum data points in each cycle are
25ms/12.5us = 2000 points
This represents the number of data packets sent to the
computer. As each data packet contains 5 bytes, the
maximum data sent to the computer in each cycle is
calculated and obtained as
2000points x5 bytes = 10,000 bytes
So, 10,000 bytes have to be sent within 25 ms. Therefore,
the minimum transmission speed obtained for smooth
operation is
10KB/25ms = 400KBps
Arduino offers a maximum baud rate of 115,200 for stable
communication over the serial port. Therefore, the
communication of the Arduino board with the computer is
slow for the required system design. So, an external USB
device DLP-USB245M is used which offers speeds up to
1MBps which fulfils the requirements. The system is reading
at 400KBps from the Arduino board and writing at 400KBps
to the computer in the given time frame.
In order to utilize Arduino most efficiently registers and ports
are manipulated directly for faster read, writing, and
communication between the ports, and none of the generic
used defined commands are used. This reduced the execution
time from 5 μs (80 clock cycles) for 1 command to 125 ns (2
clock cycles).[4] This reduces the time taken for basic
accessing of ports by 40 times. Pipelining has also been
implemented. In the mentioned case this means that the
system doesn’t have to wait additionally for the ADC to
complete a conversion.

IV. GRAPHICAL INTERFACE USING LABVIEW

A computerized control system has been indigenously
developed at IGCAR for full control of the 1.7MV accelerator
with the graphical user interface built using LabVIEW. To
make the BPM interface an integral part of the control
system, LabVIEW has been used to create the user interface.
The FTDI is installed to read the data from the USB and the
data was read successfully with the help of the dll's provided
by the FTDI. The incoming data is decoded into the profile Fig.4. Equivalent oscilloscope display with additional
data and mapped with the timestamp of the iteration. The function to detect the peaks.
initial proof of principle was to generate an equivalent
oscilloscope data in real-time which is shown in Fig.4. Next
the two X and Y profiles were separated as shown in Fig.5, V. CONCLUSION
and the separated profiles were used to generate a 2D The initial testing showed that the proposed design can
visualization of the beam using the intensity graph of smoothly display up to 20 profiles per second in real-time
LabView as shown in Fig.6. and 3D intensity plots as shown with almost instant response. The maximum resolution of the
in Fig.7. These graphs help user to visualize the step is 1000 points for each profile which gives the step size
corresponding position and size of the beam inside the of 0.05 mm. The proposed design will function properly for
accelerator. Another graph was generated with the moving a BPM that works similarly to the HVE BPM even with
average for smooth transitions and dynamic cursers were different sweep frequencies.
added that position themselves at the X-center and Y-center Also, provision is made for future expansion of the presented
automatically along with peak detectors for oscilloscope-like design. It can be expanded to support for up to 4 BPMs using
visual along with additional information for more accurate the 4 available channels of the ADC.
tuning as shown in Fig.8.

Fig.6. 2D intensity graph and pseudo representation of Beam

profile. (2D intensity Graph) Fig.7. 3D intensity graph
 REFERENCES

[1] R. I. Cutler, D. L. Mohr, J. K. Whittaker and N. R. Yoder, "A High
Resolution Wire Scanner Beam Profile Monitor with a Microprocessor
Data Acquisition System," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science,
vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 2213-2215, Aug. 1983, doi:
10.1109/TNS.1983.4332765.
[2] David Button, David Garton, Michael Mann, Shu Yan” Advancements
in the Management Measurements & Visualisation of NEC Beam
Profile Monitors,” Proceedings, 4th International Beam
Instrumentation Conference, IBIC2015 10.18429/JACoW-IBIC2015-
TUPB005
[3] https://forum.arduino.cc/t/maximum-sampling-receiving-frequency-
of-arduino-analog-vs-digital/693167
[4] Timo Denk, Port Manipulation and Arduino’s digitalWrite
Performance, Timo Denk’s Blog, April 9,2017.
[5] K. Wittenburg –DESY presentation on Beam Emittance and Beam
Profile Monitors.

Fig.5. Snapshot of Separated X and Y Profiles with beamline position mapping

Fig.8. Snapshot of Moving Average data of oscilloscope display along with x and y center lines and peak detectors