The SPS Individual Bunch Measurement System

The Individual Bunch Measurement System (IBMS) allows the intensity of each bunch in an LHC batch to be the measured both in the PS to SPS transfer lines and in the SPS ring itself. The method is vased on measuring the peak and valley of the analogue signal supplied by a Fast Beam Current Transformer at a frequency of 40 MHz. A 12 bit acquisition system is required to obtain a 1% resolution for the intensity range of 5X10`9 to 1.7X10`11 protons per bunch, corresponding to the pilot and ultimate LHC bunch intensities. The acquisition selection and external trigger adjustment system is driven by the 200MHz RF, which is distributed using a single-mode fibre-optic link. A local oscilloscope, controlled via a GPIB interface, allows the remote adjustment of the timing signals. The low-level software consists of a real-time task and a communication server run on a VME Power PC, which is accessed using a graphical user interface. This paper describes the system as a whole and presents some recent uses and results from the SPS run in 2000.