Latency Evaluation in the Image Acquisition System Based on MTCA.4 Architecture for Plasma Diagnostics

ITER diagnostic systems provide measurements to the Plasma Control System (PCS) in real-time. These measurements are used for plasma control and machine protection. Latency is an important parameter in the assessment of such systems. It is a time gap between capturing an external event by hardware and finishing the processing of acquired data. PCS requires the diagnostic systems to introduce a maximum total latency of 10 to 100 ms, therefore, the systems need to be tested if they meet the requirements. The system evaluated in this paper is a reference real-time image acquisition system developed as a base for ITER diagnostic systems. It consists of hardware based on the Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture (MicroTCA) standard, developed firmware, and software. It supports cameras with various interfaces. In the paper, two cameras, with a Camera Link and 1 GigE Vision interfaces were selected to perform latency evaluation. The paper presents two methods of measuring the latency of image acquisition. The first one is based on precise time stamping consecutive stages of acquisition. This approach allows for determining which step of acquisition takes more or less time. In consequence, the software or hardware can be optimized. The other one uses LED to evaluate a particular camera, by checking the time of camera reaction to the trigger. A dedicated testing framework is developed to perform automated tests to evaluate latency. It supports collecting and analyzing the results of measurements. Besides that, a dedicated hardware is used to perform the latency tests using LED. The results and discussion of the measurements are presented in the manuscript. They show the latency evaluated using earlier proposed methods, comparing the cameras used in the image acquisition system.