I goofed on the transfer function requirement by not giving you the plant transfer function, which looks to be about 0.014 V/V, independent of frequency (PSL:1278). This needs to be compensated for in the electronic transfer function.

 After many, many moons of getting to know exactly how frustrating Altium can be, I have completed the PCB layout for my ISS board (final page of ISS_v3.pdf).

Before I get into detail about the PCB, there is one significant schematic change to note: the comparator circuit was changed (with significant help from Koji) so that the voltage reference for boost triggering is established in a more logical way. Instead of the somewhat convoluted topology I had before, now there are only two feedback resistors, R82 and R83. Because their resistances (500k and 50k respectively) are so much larger than the total resistance of the 1k potentiometer (used to establish a tunable threshold voltage), the current flowing through the feedback loop is negligible compared to the 5 mA current flowing through the potentiometer (the pot is rated for 2 W and with 5 mA -> 25 mW dissapation). This allows one to set the threshold voltage for my schmitt trigger, at pin 2 of both the pot and the comparator, entirely with the pot. This trigger also has hysteresis given by the relation deltaV ~ (R83/R82) * (Voh - Vol) where deltaV is the separation between threshold voltages, Voh is the high-level comparator ouput and Vol is the low-level comparator output. Koji simulated this using CircuitLab and I plan to verify the behavior by making a quick prototype circuit.

Now, on to the PCB. The board itself is of a 'standard' LIGO size (11" x 6") has 3 routing layers and 3 internal planes, one for +15 V, one for -15 V and one for GND. In the attached pdf, red is the top routing layer, blue is the bottom layer and brown is the middle routing layer (used for ±5 V exclusively). The grey circles are pads and vias (drilled through) and anything in black is silkscreen overlay. I placed each component and track by hand, attempting to minimize the signal path and following the general rules below,

• Headers for power, ±5 V and ±15V, are at the back of the board
• For sections of the board such as filter stages or buffers, resistors and capacitors were grouped around their respective op-amps.
• As often as was possible, routing was confined to the top layer. Tracks on the bottom layer were placed mostly out of necessity (i.e. no possible connection on top routing layer).
• The signal generally proceeds from left to right (directions with respect to the attached printout) in the same logical order as on the schematic sheets. Refer to the global sheet (page 1) of the attached "ISS_v3.pdf".
• External ports such as the PD input, various monitoring ports and panel mounted switches/LEDs were all connected to the board via headers located along the front edge. These are also ordered following the schematic layout.
• Occasionally, similar signal paths were grouped together although this was a rarity on my board

Sections of the board have been partitioned and labeled with silkscreen overlay to help in both signal pathway recognition as well as eventual troubleshooting.

On the board, I have also included holes so that it can be mounted inside of an enclosure. There is a DCC number printed as well as a 'barcode' (TrueType font: IDAutomationC39S), although they both contain filler asterisks as I haven't published this to the DCC and thus do not have a number.

[Rana, Nic, Evan]

We did some work today on getting the AOM back up and running so that we can implement an SR560-based ISS.

We've removed the 18 AWG wire that was previously used to power the driver and have replaced it with a 12 AWG twisted pair (black and white, enclosed in a single gray cladding). This pair runs into the PSL rack's 24 V terminal block with a 2 A fuse. We've also replaced the cable connecting the AOM to the driver; it's now RG405.

Also disconnected the power to the old Kalmus FSS crystal driver box and turned it off. It was powered illegally. Also disconnected the power connection between the Sorensen and the old ISS AA chassis since it was wired directly without any fuse (which is a code violation). It will stay off until someone uses a proper fuse and wiring to hook it back up.

 Previously in elog 8959, I gave a very simple method for determining the noise suppression behavior of the ISS. Recently, I recalculated this requirement in a more correct fashion and again redesigned the ISS to be used in the CTN experiment.

• Determining the Requirement

Just as before, the data from PSL elog 1270 is necessary to infer a noise suppression requirement. The data presented there by Evan consists of two noise spectra, 1) the unstabilized RIN presently observed in the CTN experiment readout and 2) the theoretical brownian noise produced by thermal processes in the mirror coating+substrate. The statement "TF_mag = (Unstabilized RIN) / (Calculated Brownian Noise Limit)", where TF_mag refers to the required open-loop gain of the ISS, is actually a first order approximation of the 'required' noise suppression. In fact if we wanted the laser noise to be suppressed below the calculated brownian noise level, it is more correct to say 

        Closed-loop ISS gain = (Calculated Brownian Noise Limit) / (Unstabilized RIN)

As this essentially gives a noise suppression spectrum i.e. a closed-loop gain in linear control theory. Below is a very simple block diagram showing how the ISS fits into the CTN experiment. The F(f) block represents my full servo board.

Some of the relevant quantities involved:

So looking at the block diagram, our full closed-loop transfer function is given by,

So then to determine the required F(f), i.e. the required transfer function for my servo, we consider the expression 

The plant transfer function is simply Plant = (C(f) * a * P * A) ~ 0.014 V/V, where I have ignored the cavity pole around 97 kHz as our open-loop transfer function ends up crossing unity gain around 10 kHz. In the above, I have included what I call a 'safety factor' of 10. Essentially, I want to design my servo such that it suppresses noise well beyond what is actually required so that we can be sure noise contributions to experiment readouts are not significantly influenced by the laser intensity noise.

• Proposed Servo Design

Using the data Evan reported for the brownian noise and free-running RIN, I came up with an F(f) to the meet the requirement as shown below.

 Where the blue curve includes the safety factor mentioned before. This plot just demonstrates that using my modular ISS design, I can meet the given noise suppression requirements.

To be complete, I'll say a little more about the final design.  As usual, the servo consists of three stages. The first is the usual LP filter that is always 'on' when the ISS loop is closed. The boosts I have chosen to use consist of an integrator with a single zero and a filter that looks somewhat like a de-whitening filter. The simulated open-loop transfer functions are shown below.

Right near the end of summer, I had an ISS board that was nominally working, but had a few problems I couldn't really sort out. Since I've been back, I've spent a lot of time just replacing parts, trying different circuit topologies and generally attempting to make the board function as I hoped it might in all those design stages. Below is a brief list of some of the problems I've been fixing as well as the first good characterization of the board transfer function that I've been able to get.

We'll start with some of the simple problems and proceed to more complicated ones.

• The 5V reference I was using to obtain an error signal from some arbitrary DC photodiode readout was only producing ~2.5 V. 
  • Turns out I just need a FET type op-amp for the Sallen-Key Filter that I was using to clean up any noise in the reference output, as the leakage current in a AD829 was causing a significant voltage drop. I put in an OPA140 and everything worked marvelously.
• The way I set up input grounding (i.e. send a ~0 amplitude signal through the board as an input) passed a few Amps through one of my chips causing it to burn out rather fantastically.
  • There isn't a good way to fix this on the current board (besides just getting rid of the functionality altogether) so my solution so far has just been to redesign that particular sub-system/feature and when we implement the second version of the ISS, the input grounding will be done correctly
• One of the ICs I'm using, specifically the AD8436 RMS-to-DC converter, causes some super strange oscillations in -5V power line. When this chip is soldered onto the board, the -5V supply jumps between -3V and -10V rather sporadically and the DC power-supply used to provide that -5V says that board is drawing ~600 mA on that particular power line.
  • To date, I don't really have any idea what's going with this chip, and I've tried a lot of things to remedy the problem. My first thought was that I had some sort of short somewhere so I took the chip off the board, cleaned up all the excess solder and flux around the chip's footprint and then meticulously soldered a new chip on (when I say meticulously, it took over an hour to solder 20 little feet. I really really didn't want to short anything accidentally as the chip only comes in a package with ridicously small spacing between the leads). Lo and behold, nothing happened. I still saw the same oscillations in power supply and the board was still drawing between >500 mA on that line. Just to be sure, I soldered on a third chip taking the same amount of care and had the same problems.
  • I went over the schematic in Altium that we used to order the board, and unless the manufacturer made a mistake somewhere, there aren't any incorrectly routed signals would cause, say, two active devices to try setting the voltage of a particular node to different values.
  • I got some QSOP-to-DIP package converters so that I could mess around with the AD8436 on a breadboard to make sure it functioned correctly. I set up an identical circuit to the one on the PCB and didn't see any oscillations in the power supply, both for +-5V and +-15V as the chip can handle both supply voltages. I'm not really sure how to interpret this...
  • I'm still actively trying to figure this particular problem out, but I'm shooting in the dark at this point. 
• Initial attempts to measure the transfer-function of the board were wrought with failure.
  • I figured out, with Nic's help, that the board needs the 'loop closed' with a significant broadband attenuator (to simulate the plant optics discussed in elog 9331) in order to not have constant railing of the high gain op-amp filter stages. Even after I did this, the measured transfer functions were not at all consistent with simulation. I wasn't sure if it was just a part issue, a design issue or a misunderstanding/bad data collection on my part so I just redesigned the whole servo and stuffed the board with entirely new components from around the 40m. Turns out the newly designed servo behaved more properly, as I will show below.

The above list encompasses all the issues I've had in making the ISS board function correctly. No other major problems exist to my knowledge.

I was able to measure both the open- and closed-loop transfer functions of the servo with the SR785. The results are shown below.

The transfer function with the boosts on caps at a particular value set by op-amp railing, i.e. below 100 Hz, the op-amps are already putting out their max voltage. This is the usual physical limitation when measuring the transfer function of an integrator. We can also see that the measured phase follows the simulated phase above ~300 Hz. The 'phase matching' at low frequency is again do to the op-amp railing in the servo output..

The closed-loop gain is shown below,

The measured closed-loop gain with the boosts on again matches the LISO simulation quite well except at low frequency where we are limited by op-amp railing. We compare the measured closed-loop transfer function to the desired noise suppression stipulated in my previous elog 9331,

 And we might hopefully conclude that my servo functions as desired. One should note that the op-amp railing seen in these measurements is not indicative of limitations we might face in some application of the ISS for the following reason. These transfer functions were measured with a 100 mV excitation signal (it is necessary to keep this signal amplitude large enough so that the inherent signal-to-noise ratio of the excitation source is large enough for accurate measurement) which leads to somewhat prompt railing of the op-amps. When the ISS operates to actually stabilize a laser, the input error signal will be much smaller (on the order of a few 10's of mV or less) and will decrease significantly assuming correct operation of the ISS. This means we won't see the same type of gain limitations.

What now, you ask?

Aside from the problem with the AD8436 chip, the ISS board seems to be functioning correctly. The transfer functions we have measured are correct to within the component tolerances and all of the various subsystems are behaving as they were designed to. Moving toward the goal of having this system work in situ for the CTN experiment, I need to do the following things,

• Design a housing for the board -> order said housing and the front panel previously designed
• Make sure the power supply daughter PCB boards are compatible with the ISS board and can provide power correctly
• Talk to Evan and Tara about integrating the ISS with their experiment and make sure my board can do everything it needs to in that context.

So close, or so I say all the time 

We have implemented an SR560-based ISS loop using the AOM on the PSL table. This is a continuation of the work in 40m:9328.

We dumped the diffracted beam from the AOM onto a stack of razor blades. This beam is not terribly well separated from the main beam, so the razor blades are at a very severe angle. Any alternatives would have involved either moving the AOM or attempting to dump the diffracted beam somewhere on the PMC refl path. We trimmed the RF power potentiometer on the driver so that with 0.5 V dc applied to the AM input, about 10% of the power is diverted from the main beam.

We ran the PMC trans PD into an AC-coupled SR560. To shape the loop, we set SR560 to have a single-pole low- pass at 300 Hz and an overall gain of 5×10⁴. We take the 600 Ω output and send it into a 50 Ω feed-through terminator; this attenuates the voltage by a factor of 10 or so and thereby ensures that the AOM driver is not overdriven.

The AOM driver's AM input accepts 0 to 1 V, so we add an offset to bias the control signal. The output of the 50 Ω feedthrough is sent into the 'A' input of a second SR560 (DC coupled, A − B setting, gain 1, no filtering). Using a DS345 function generator, a 500 mV offset is put into the 'B' input (the function generator reads −0.250 V because it expects 50 Ω input). The 50 Ω output of this SR560 is sent into the AOM driver's AM input.

A measurement of suppressed and unsuppressed RIN is attached. We have achieved a loop with a bandwidth of a few kilohertz and with an in-loop noise suppression factor of 50 from 100 Hz to 1 kHz. This measurement was done using the PMC trans PD, so this spectrum may underestimate the true RIN.

AOM driving from DAC:

I found that the DAC channels for TT3 and TT4 are connected up in the simulink model, but we aren't using them, since we don't actually have those tip tilts installed.  So, we hooked up the TT4 LR DAC output, which is channel 8 on the 2nd set of SMA outputs.  We put our AOM excitations into TT4_LR_EXC.

 A small followup measurement. Here are spectra of the MC trans diode with and without the ISS on. The DC value of the diode (in counts) changed from 17264.2 (no ISS) to 17504.3 (with ISS), but I didn't account for this change in the plot.

There is a small inkling of benefit between 100Hz and 1kHz. Above about 100Hz, the RIN is suppressed to about the noise level of this measurement. Below 100Hz there is no change, which probably means that power fluctuations are introduced downstream of the AOM, which argues for an outer-loop ISS down the road.

Atm #2 is in units of RIN.

 I have disconnected the cable from the SR560 to LSC -ch8 for 15minutes this morning. It is moved from the floor to the top of the chambers as preparation for 40m tour. The SR560 seems to be overloading.

The  ISS servo is off according to the MEDM screen. Why MC-T plot showing zero?  The MC was happy yesterday.

Back in November, Nic and Evan turned on an SR560 based ISS. It uses the PMC TRANS PD as the error signal and makes an AC coupled loop with 2 SR560's and then it drives the RF amplifier which drives the AOM upstream of the PMC.

This was the saturating SR560 under the PSL table that Steve found this week*. Tonight I found that the +24 V rack fuse for this was blown. I replaced the previous 2A fuse with a new 2A fuse (turned off the +/24 V Sorensens during this operation). I think all of the servo settings are basically the same as before, except that I'm using a gain of 10000 instead of 50000 on the first SR560. It was saturating otherwise. My guess is that the fuse blew many months ago and no one has noticed...

 I checked the out of loop performance in MC_TRANS and in the IFO REFL_DC and there's some high frequency improvement with the loops on.

The main improvement, however, was in lowering the HEPA fan speed. This should only be turned up to Hurricane when you are working on the table. Similarly, those of us trying to lock at night, can't really trust that the HEPA is set to its nominal low setting of 20%. The whole difference in the MC_TRANS from 5-50 Hz is from this however, so we can use this ISS reference .xml as a way to see if the HEPA is up too high.

If we want to do better for RIN from 100-1000 Hz for improving the REFL_DC/CARM noise, we would have to think of how to improve the PMC_TRANS PD RIN.

* Steve gets +1 point for finding this, but then -3 points for not elogging.

Vbias ---
        |
       PD
        |-------- output
     resistor
        |
       ---
        -

V_test[2*w]/V_test[1*w] - V_ref[2*w]/V_ref[1*w]

V_nl[beta,2*w]/V_nl[beta,1*w] - V_l[2*w]/V_l[1*w]

X Arm
FSR     =  (3897627 +/- 5 )   Hz
L       = (38.45833  +/- 0.00005) m
g2x     =   0.31197  +/- 0.00004
g2y     =   0.32283  +/- 0.00004
R-ETM_x = (55.8957   +/- 0.0045) m
R-ETM_y = (56.7937   +/- 0.0038) m

Y Arm
FSR     = ( 3879252 +/- 30 )  Hz
L       = (38.6462   +/- 0.0003) m
g2x     =   0.31188  +/- 0.00004
g2y     =   0.32601  +/- 0.00004
R-ETM_x = (56.1620   +/- 0.0013) m
R-ETM_y = (57.3395   +/- 0.0011) m