First years experience of LHC Beam Instrumentation

The LHC is equipped with a full suite of sophisticated beam instrumentation which has been essential for rapid commissioning, the safe increase in total stored beam power and the understanding of machine optics and accelerator physics phenomena. This paper will comment on all of these systems and on their contributions to the various stages of beam commissioning. It will include details on: the beam position system and its use for realtime global orbit feedback; the beam loss system and its role in machine protection; total and bunch by bunch intensity measurements; tune measurement and feedback; synchrotron light diagnostics for transverse beam size measurements, abort gap monitoring and longitudinal density measurements. Issues and problems encountered along the way will also be discussed together with the prospect for future upgrades.