A fringe jump counting method for the phase measurement in the HCN laser interferometer on EAST and its FPGA-based implementation

Electron density in fusion plasma is usually diagnosed using laser-aided interferometers. The phase difference signal obtained after phase demodulation is wrapped, which is also called a fringe jump. A method has been developed to unwrap the phase difference signal in real time using FPGA, specifically designed to handle fringe jumps in the hydrogen cyanide (HCN) laser interferometer on the EAST superconducting tokamak. This method is designed for a phase demodulator using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) method at the front end. The method is better adapted for hardware implementation compared to complex mathematical analysis algorithms, such as field programmable gate array (FPGA). It has been applied to process the phase measurement results of the HCN laser interferometer on EAST in real time. Electron density results show good confidence in the fringe jump unwrapping method. Further possible application in other laser interferometers, such as the POlarimeter-INTerferometer (POINT) system on EAST tokamak is also discussed.