
Digital Low-Level RF control system for
Accumulator Ring at Advanced Light Source
Upgrade Project
Qiang Du∗, Shreeharshini Murthy, Michael Betz, Kevin Bender, Wayne Lewis, Najm Us Saqib,
Sergio Paiagua, Lawrence Doolittle, Carlos Serrano, Benjamin Flugstad, Kenneth Baptiste
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley, CA, 94720 USA
Email: QDu@lbl.gov
Abstract—Currently ALS is undergoing an upgrade to ALS-
U to produce 100 times brighter soft X-ray light. The LLRF
system for Accumulator Ring (AR) is composed of two identical
LLRF stations, for driving RF amplifiers. The closed loop RF
amplitude and phase stability is measured as <0.1% and
<0.1◦respectively, using the non-IQ digital down conversion
together with analog up/down conversion, under a system-on-
chip architecture. Realtime interlock system is implemented
with <2µs latency, for machine protection against arc flash
and unexpected RF power. Control interfaces are developed to
enable PLC-FPGA-EPICS communication to support operation,
timing, cavity tuning, and interlock systems. The LLRF system
handles alignment of buckets to swap beams between AR and
Storage Ring by synchronous phase loop ramping between the
two cavities. The system also includes an optimization routine to
characterize the loop dynamics and determine optimal operating
point using a built-in network analyzer feature. A cavity emulator
of 31 kHz bandwidth is integrated with the LLRF system to
validate the performance of the overall system being developed.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy’s syn-
chrotron light source user facility that is operational since
1993. With circumference of 196.8 m, the ALS Storage Ring
(SR) keeps electron beam current of 500 mA at 1.9 GeV under
multi–bunch mode user operation to deliver synchrotron X-
rays to surrounding 40 experimental end stations. [1]
There is an ongoing ALS upgrade project (ALS-U), sched-
uled to upgrade towards 2 orders of magnitude increase in
brightness and flux of 1keV soft X-rays at diffraction limit.
The ALS-U project involves a new 2.0 GeV Storage Ring
(SR) in existing tunnel optimized for low emittance, and add
a new 2.0 GeV Accumulator Ring (AR) for full energy swap-
out injection and bunch train recovery, as shown in Fig. 1.
The AR is a triple-bend-achromat (TBA) lattice, very similar
to the current ALS SR lattice. The RF system requirements
for the TBA lattice can be found in Table I. Two normal
conducting RF cavities have been selected for AR. Each RF
cavity is driven by an identical chain from a high power solid-
state amplifier (SSA) and low-level RF (LLRF) control system,
together with personnel safety interlocks, equipment protection
interlocks, etc.
Fig. 1: ALS Upgrade with both Accumulator and Storage
Rings
ALS SR ALS-U SR ALS-U AR
Cavity RF Frequency 499.64 500.394 500.394 MHz
Number of Cavities 2 2 2
R
Q(ea) 4.9 4.9 3.4–3.5 MΩ
Cavity voltage 671 300 500 kV
β2.9 10.6 1.18
Energy loss per trun 329 347 270 keV
BM Beam Power 141 125 13.3 kW
ID Beam Power 42 35 kW
3HC Beam Power 7.3 13.8 kW
Parasitic Beam Power 2.9 (est.) 2.6 (est.) 0.2 kW
Total Beam Power 192.9 176.4 13.5 kW
Cavity Power(no beam) 46 9.2 36.0 kW
Cavity Power(beam) 142.5 97.4 42.7 kW
High Power Amplifier 294.0 197.5 60 kW
TABLE I: ALS and ALS-U AR and SR RF parameters
II. HARDWARE DESIGN
The AR LLRF system consists of two identical stations,
each controlling one SSA and RF cavity, but sharing communi-
cation interface with a central interlock PLC and both stations
are coordinated By common timing events for synchronous
operations. Each LLRF station consists of an analog frontend
chassis and a digital chassis. The analog chassis receives ALS-
U master oscillator and generates local oscillator (LO) signal,
and provides frequency conversions including 6 channels of
down-conversion and 2 channels of up-conversion between
arXiv:2210.05095v1 [physics.acc-ph] 11 Oct 2022