A development and integration analysis of commercial and in-house control subsystems

The acquisition and integration of commercial automation and control subsystems in physics research is becoming more common. It is presumed these systems present lower risk and less cost. This paper studies four subsystems used in the Accelerator Production of Tritium (APT) Low Energy Demonstration Accelerator (LEDA) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The radio frequency quadrupole (RFQ) resonance-control cooling subsystem (RCCS), the high-power RF subsystem and the RFQ vacuum subsystem were outsourced; the low-level RF (LLRF) subsystem was developed in-house. Based on the authors experience a careful evaluation of the costs and risks in acquisition, implementation, integration, and maintenance associated with these approaches is given.