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This paper presents the development of a mock-up Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) system along with a new algorithmic approach for fast automatic impedance matching. The mock-up is developed for low power (few watts) and frequency (182.5 MHz) i.e. five times the ICRH frequency of SST-1. The size of the mock-up is considerably reduced to be fit on the test bench using it. The main objective of the work is to develop different matching approaches in order to get the optimum speed of matching. Reducing the size of the mock-up allows frequent implementation and testing of new algorithms which is generally difficult to implement in the real system of tokamak because of its size and complexity. The system consists of indigenously developed components such as 3 dB hybrid coupler, 20 dB directional coupler, tapped transmission line, rigid coaxial stub tuners, line stretcher, service stub, RF antenna, movable water tank based load. The developed system is capable of automatically match any arbitrary load in the range, (35–260) Ω , resistive + (-j25 to +j220) Ω , reactive or VSWR in the range 1.5–4.0 within 200 ms. The matching system also consists of power detectors which automatically sense the forward and reflected power using coupler and the feedback controlled moving coaxial stubs, line stretchers respond as per developed algorithms. The matching algorithm incorporates the various matching steps based on VSWR which have been interpreted for the controller program to control the devices used in the matching network. The developed system is tested using an RF antenna facing the movable saltwater tank that emulates the plasma-like loading behavior. The developed setup is also useful for various high power RF applications like RF heating, sputtering, plasma generation, RADAR, etc. in the RF frequency range.
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