Beam position monitor R&D for keV ion beams

Beams of cooled antiprotons at keV energies shall be provided by the Ultra-low energy Storage Ring (USR) at the Facility for Low energy Antiproton and Ion Research (FLAIR) and the Extra Low ENergy Antiproton ring (ELENA) at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) facility. Both storage rings put challenging demands on the beam position monitoring (BPM) system as their capacitive pick-ups should be capable of determining the beam position of beams at low intensities and low velocities, close to the noise level of state-of-the-art electronics. In this contribution we describe the design and anticipated performance of BPMs for low-energy ion beams with a focus on the ELENA orbit measurement systems. We also present the particular challenges encountered in the numerical simulation of pickup response at very low beta values. Finally, we provide an outlook on how the implementation of faster algorithms for the simulation of BPM characteristics could potentially help speed up such studies considerably.