The Upgrade of Control Hardware of the CERN NA62 Beam Vacuum

NA62 is the follow-up of the NA48 experiment, in the SPS North Area of CERN, and reuses a large fraction of its detectors and beam line equipment. Still, there are many new vacuum devices in the beam line (including pumps, valves & gauges), which required a thorough modification of the control system and a large number of new controllers, many of which were custom-made. The NA62 vacuum control system is based on the use of PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition). The controllers and signal conditioning electronics are accessed from the PLC via a field bus (Profibus); optical fibre is used between surface racks and the underground gallery. The control hardware was completely commissioned during 2014. The nominal pressure levels were attained in all sectors of the experiment. The remote control of all devices and the interlocks were successfully tested. This paper summarizes the architecture of the vacuum control system of NA62, the types of instruments to control, the communication networks, the hardware alarms and the supervisory interface.