A FAST PROCESSOR OF TOKAMAK ION TEMPERATURES

CHARGE EXCHANGE RECOMBINATION (CER) SPECTRA PROVIDE A MEASUREMENT OF ION TEMPERATURES IN TOKAMAK EXPERIMENTS, BUT THE AVAILABILITY OF RESULTS IS SEVERELY AFFECTED BY THE ANALYTICAL COMPUTATION TIME. THIS PROJECT APPLIES DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUES TO THIS PROBLEM AND ULTIMATELY COULD DEVELOP A DEDICATED PROCESSOR SYSTEM THAT PRODUCES ION TEMPERATURE ESTIMATES WITHIN MINUTES OF DISCHARGE. THE SPEED WOULD BE ACHIEVED BY NOVELTY FILTERING OF THE SPECTRAL DATA FOR KNOWN INTERFERING LINES AND BY ESTIMATING THE PARAMETERS OF THE REMAINING SPECTRUM WITH A NEURAL NETWORK. PHASE I WORK IS DEVOTED TO IDENTIFYING THE OPTIMAL ALGORITHMS FOR NOVELTY FILTERING AND PARAMETER ESTIMATION BY TRIAL CALCULATIONS WITH ACTUAL CER DATA. THIS PROJECT ALSO INCLUDES A DESIGN FOR THE HARDWARE PROCESSOR. IN PHASE II, THE CALCULATION WOULD BE IMPLEMENTED IN A FAST PARALLEL ARCHITECTURE SIMILAR TO SYSTEMS PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED.