TESLA Report 2003 - 16 1 FPGA based RF control

The RF control system of the TESLA Test Facility employs a digital control, feedback and feedforward system to provide flexibility of control algorithms, extensive diagnostics and high immunity against electromagnetic interference. The current implementation features digital signal processors (DSP) for computing and processing the necessary control functions. Despite the fact, that the selected 320TMS6701 DSPs from TI contain four parallel execution units, significant amount of serial processing is necessary. In contrast, Field programma-ble Gate Arrays (FPGA) are repro grammable logic devices, which have the ability of much higher degre e of parallel processing. Due to the r ecent advances in terms of available hardware and software design flow, FPGAs are well suited for high-speed and low latency RF control purposes.