Analog Front End Development for the Large Hadron Collider Interlock Beam Position Monitor Upgrade

The interlock Beam Position Monitor (BPM) system in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is responsible for monitoring the particle beam position at the point of the beam dump kicker magnets and is part of the machine protection system. The current interlock BPM system has some limitations and because of this, an upgrade project has been initiated. This master thesis describes the development of the analog front end electronics of this system, consisting mainly of two parts: A delay line based microwave filter and a high isolation and highly balanced power combiner circuit. The filter has been validated with real LHC beam measurements and is found to work as expected. More work however needs to be done to ensure the effect that the filter itself has on the beam measurements as the filter could introduce some ringing effects on the signal. The highly balanced high isolation power combiner has been tested through lab measurements and also shows promising results but long-term tests need to be conducted to ensure the reliability of the component as it will need to endure very high signal levels over long periods of time.