Plasma current and shape control for ITER using fast online MPC

Abstract

In this work we explore the practical feasibility of using MPC for PCSC in the ITER tokamak, employing complexity reduction techniques and recently developed fast on-line quadratic programming (QP) optimization methods. A survey of the available QP methods suitable for the on-line solution of MPC optimization problems is given, with emphasis on first-order methods, which have been recently considered as prime candidates for fast online MPC control. Using a modification of the QP solver QPgen, a five-fold speed-up compared to the state-of-the-art commercial solver CPLEX was achieved, with peak computation times below 10 ms using a four-core Intel processor.