The Beam Instrumentation and Diagnostic Challenges for LHC Operation at high Energy

This contribution will present the role of beam diagnostics in facing the challenges posed by running the LHC close to its design energy of 7TeV. Machine protection will be ever more critical, with the quench level of the magnets significantly reduced, so relying heavily on the beam loss system, abort gap monitor, interlocks on the beam position and fast beam current change system. Non-invasive profile monitoring also becomes more of a challenge, with standard synchrotron light imaging limited by diffraction and rest gas ionization monitoring dominated by space charge effects. There is also a requirement to better understand beam instabilities, of which several were observed during Run I, leading to the need for synchronised bunch-by-bunch, turn-by-turn information from many distributed instrumentation systems. All of these challenges will be discussed along with the strategies adopted to overcome them.