- A magnetic field measuring instrument board achieving 100-fold improved frequency bandwidth and resolution compared to previous designs, contributing to the ultra-high-precision beamforming performance of the world's most powerful particle accelerator

October 26, 2011 – Analog Devices ( www.analog.com ), a global leader in high-performance semiconductors and a leader in the worldwide data converter market, announced today that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and the University of Sannio in Benevento, Italy, have jointly designed a high-performance instrument for measuring the magnetic fields of superconducting magnets at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Called the 'FDI (Fast Digital Integrator) Board,' this instrument utilizes Analog Devices' A/D converters, analog multiplexers, and DSP components to provide the LHC with the best magnetic field measurement performance ever.

The new FDI board enables resolution and frequency bandwidth 100 times higher than previous generations of digital integrators. With innovative improvements in dynamic range, scientists can detect very fine artifacts that can affect magnetic field changes, decays, and time-related phenomena typically observed in high-field superconducting accelerator magnets during research and have a detrimental effect on particle beam quality. The FDI board used at CERN this time is used to measure magnetic flux at a speed of 10 rps (revolutions per second) through fast-rotating calibrated coils that evaluate the magnetic fields produced by the eight Tesla magnets of the LHC.

“Before the FDI board was announced, the electronic components available to us were not suitable in terms of accuracy or resolution, but with the LHC, it is easy to reach 10 ppm (parts per million),” said Pasquale Arpaia, an engineering professor at Sannio University. “Analog Devices was selected as a partner because the quality of their products, as well as the level of data and support, were all very high. As a result, through FDI, we have been able to uncover new areas of magnetic investigation that were previously impossible.”

The LHC is the world's largest and most advanced energy particle accelerator and boasts the largest scale among man-made machines. Construction began in 2003, and it started operation in 2008. The role of the LHC is to verify some of the most fundamental problems in physics and to improve the understanding of the most basic laws of nature. You can find more details about CERN through the video at the URL below.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Videos

Analog Devices products delivering outstanding speed, power, and low noise performance
The ADI products designated by the research team for use on the FDI board are as follows.
• A/D Converter (AD7634): The 18-bit analog-to-digital converter achieves a maximum sampling rate of 670 kS/s and an excellent signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SINAD) of 101 dB.
• Multiplexer (ADG406): The multiplexer is characterized by fast switching speed, low power dissipation, and low on-resistance.
• SHARC DSP (ADSP-21262): The 32-bit/40-bit floating-point processor is optimized for high-performance signal processing applications and features two computing units, 2 Mbit dual-port on-chip SRAM, multiple internal buses to eliminate I/O bottlenecks, and innovative digital application interfaces.